A Tale of Swords and Scales
by Restanda
Summary: After a fight with Rin, Zelretch appears at Shirou's house and sends him off to an alternate dimension after being volunteered for a mission by a peeved Rin. He lands outside Ilias Village, a small village on the continent of Ilias. Shirou learns that he has a chance to do something he always wanted to do, to become a hero. But will it turn out how he always imagined it would?
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the anything from the Fate/Stay Night Universe, owned by Type-Moon, or Monster Girl Quest, owned by Torotoro Resistance. All credit is given to the owners of their works. The only thing I will claim to own is the changes I have made to any character or the storyline that is not canon.**

**Any content, for now, that is in italics is Alice's thoughts about the situation. In the future, if there are other characters who have their own thoughts on the story, they will also be in italics, and it will be marked who is thinking, however, by default, Italics are Alice. Thanks Hjrujana, I didn't even think about clarifying that. Thus proving the importance of reviews. Thanks to guisniperman for pointing out a few bad habits of mine. I fixed it, and theres a bit more content to the dialogues. Thanks to Kronos89 for giving me a nice little tidbit about spacing.**

This was not how Shirou Emiya expected his day to turn out. One moment, he's living life the way he had since the end of the fifth war, living with Rin and Saber in London, as the former's apprentice and personal maid/chef. He had expected to spend his day fixing up the damage to the apartment that his latest quarrel with Rin had caused, and then make dinner for Rin and Saber and hope that she wasn't still angry. What he DID NOT expect was to have a visitor knocking on his door, and he CERTAINLY didn't expect that he would be paid a visit by Zelretch. When he opened the door and saw who his visitor was, he was really hoping that he was there looking for Rin, his apprentice.

"Ah, just the man I was looking for," said Zelretch, completely dashing Shirou's hopes.

"What do you want with me, I'm just a third rate magus that shouldn't interest you one bit," Shirou replied, desperately trying to get him to leave.

"Well you see, I'm in a bit of a pickle, I need someone to take care of a bothersome task in a parallel universe that I just do not have time to fix, to be specific, they need a hero. And when I mentioned this to Rin, she said to talk to you about it."

Shirou had mixed feelings about this, on one hand he had the chance to save what seems to be a significant amount of people, but on the other hand, this was Zelretch he was dealing with, and he could quite possibly send him to a dimension where clothes were never invented.

"So before I send you off, heres a bit of advice, if you happen to talk to someone who calls herself Ilias, don't take her words at face value, she may not lie to you, but she will manipulate you to kingdom come. With that, enjoy the ride!" Without time to refuse or get a word in edgewise, Shirou found himself falling through a portal into another dimension, cursing Zelretch the entire way.

When Shirou emerged from the other side of the portal, he was astonished to say the least, for quite a few reasons. For one, it seemed that the dimension that he had been sent to was not technologically advanced, in fact it seemed to be in an equivalent of the european middle ages, judging from the town that he was dropped off in. Secondly, after some investigation with his magecraft, it seemed that this world didn't have an equivalent to Gaia, so anything he traced would not disappear on its own with time.

After looking around the town, Ilias Village as the locals called it, he discovered that the local blacksmith had recently died, and that nobody had yet to fill the position. 'How fortuitous' Shirou thought to himself as he heard that, and he immediately offered to take the position so that he could raise funds. As for the purpose of raising those funds? Well thats quite obvious, he had to do what he was sent here to do if he had any chance of getting back to his previous life any time soon. As he gathered information around town, it seemed that there was a bit of a system in place for the nomination of heroes it seemed, a ceremony was held on the goddess's birthday, which was in one month. He immediately marked that date in his mind as important.

Over the next month, Shirou worked as the town blacksmith while learning more about the world. In the beginning, he kept getting weird looks when he was seeming to be asking about things that were to them, common knowledge. Then he came up with the bright idea to say that when he wandered into town, he had been attacked, and suffered amnesia from the trauma. He learned that humans shared this world with various species of monsters, and up until 30 years ago, when a great disaster occurred which caused the destruction of a human village by the hands of monsters, humans, in general, tended to coexist quite peacefully with monsters. He also learned that this island was an exception to that rule, due to the fervor in which they served their goddess, Ilias, who hated monsters with a passion.

Furthermore, he learned that being baptized as a hero had many perks, most importantly that they had much reduced prices on pretty much everything, which would make his money go much further on his journey. After hearing that, he knew what he was going to do. He was going to attempt to have humans and monsters live peacefully together once again. He knew it was naive, and he knew it would take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to accomplish, but he was determined to do it.

After a month of waiting, the day finally arrived, the day he would set out to become a hero, however things did not go as he had planned. Warning bells started to go off in the small village.

"A MONSTER APPROACHES THE TOWN! EVERYONE GET BACK TO YOUR HOUSES!" A guard yelled at the top of his lungs, obviously trying to get everyone out of danger. Most normal people would have started running back to their houses, lock their doors, and wait for the guards to take care of it. However, Shirou, being the hero that he is, reinforced his legs and sprinted off as fast as he could to confront the monster. After all, the guards would have no qualms about killing it without trying to find a peaceful solution, and Shirou wanted to save everyone, including the monster.

When Shirou reached where the monster was, it was definitely NOT what he was expected. He had expected to find some sort of beast like creature that was at least semi-sentient waiting for him. What he found, much to his chagrin, was something far different. The monster he found was a slime, but it was definitely not any slime he had seen before, instead of being a gelatinous blob of goo, it had the shape of a person, a beautiful, busty woman who was completely naked for that fact. It seems that he had forgot to ask some important questions that he really should have asked considering who sent him here. Damn that old perverted bloodsucker, Shirou thought, and he swore that the next time he saw him he'd sock him straight in the face for this.

"Ara Ara~ Am I perhaps the first monster you have seen?" the slime girl asked with a seductive tone of voice.

"Yes, you are indeed the first monster I have seen, now would you please go back from whence you came, the people around here aren't used to seeing monsters, and they are quite frightened by your presence," Shirou replied, trying to end this situation as quickly and peacefully as possible.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, I'm far too hungry to do that. However, you look quite...delicious so if you let me feed on you, I'd be happy to go away," the slime girl replied, giving Shirou a quite seductive look as she did so.

"Thats not going to happen, if you insist on eating me I will have to defend myself," Shirou responded, getting ready to trace at a moments notice.

"Don't worry, I don't want your flesh, just your semen. I'll make sure you feel REALLY good too," the slime purred, which Shirou found quite disturbing.

"What?" Shirou replied, dumbstruck. Yep, he really needed to get some more info when he got back. And the punch he was going to give to the perverted old bastard? Its not a punch to the face anymore, its a sword to the crotch. Taking advantage of Shirou's distracted state, the slime girl attempted to tackle him, however Shirou easily dodged her attack and began to trace swords behind him.

"Now, I recommend you leave. I can create over 50 of these swords at a time, and I can launch them faster than arrows. If you don't heed my warning, these will be impaling you," Shirou stated in an eerily calm voice, which did not match the aura of death he was giving off. With that, the slime girl drained of all color, and ran as fast as she could away from the man who, to her, looked more terrifying than Ilias herself.

After going around the village talking to every person he could trying to make sense of what insane world the old pervert had sent him to, Shirou had come to a few conclusions. One, the monsters of this world were all female, and looked it. Two, since they were all female, they all needed human males to reproduce. Three, in addition to the need for human males to reproduce, several species fed primarily on human semen to survive, like the slime he had just scared away with a few dozen swords levelled at her. Four, the laws of the main religion of the land forbade giving semen to monsters and reproducing with monsters, essentially making it so that monsters were forced to attack humans to survive.

These facts made him question how benevolent this "Ilias" character really was, and he was already planning a speech about how irresponsible she was for creating monsters like this and then making it so that they had to attack her other creations to survive. He had also heard rumors that if a human were to be seduced by a monster and brought to their peak, so to speak, they would suffer something called "critical ecstasy" essentially paralyzing them, which made the slime's earlier efforts make a lot more sense. He had also came to the conclusion that he would still become a hero, but not in the traditional sense. Instead of going around and killing monsters that threatened humans, as he was told was the duty of a hero, he would go around the world and try to save everyone by stopping unnecessary fights and setting up systems for which both humans and monsters could benefit.

One might call him crazy for undertaking such an enormous task alone with no reward solely to be able to save everyone, but that was what it meant to be Emiya Shirou and he had pulled crazier stunts, like pulling Saber to safety when Archer was shooting a broken Caladbolg at Berzerker with no warning, to save people.

"Well, I should probably get back to the village so I can get baptized, even if I dont care for the goddess, there are quite a few benefits to becoming a formal hero," Shirou mused to himself as he headed back towards the village. However, as he started to head back towards the village, he heard a loud crash and saw a large cloud of dust kick up not even 200 meters away from where he was standing. Of course, no thoughts about the fact that it might be dangerous over there went through his head, he had to make sure that nobody over there was hurt, and if so he had to help.

When Shirou arrived on the scene, he found a large crater in the ground, and upon further investigation, he found a woman laying in the middle of the crater. He immediately rushed to see if she was alive, and if she had somehow survived a fall that created this large of a crater, he would try to help as best he could. Much to his surprise, as he looked over the woman, she was not only alive, but other than being unconscious, she appeared to be completely unharmed. It was then that he noticed that she had snow white hair, blue skin, and the tail of a snake. He had heard about monsters like her, she was a Lamia if his memory served him correctly.

"Miss, are you alright?" Shirou inquired as he gently shook her shoulder. As he said that, her eyes shot open, and for a moment amber met amber as they stared into each other's eyes.

Suddenly she rights herself, and gets into what appears to be a standing position for her and asks, "Where am I?"

"You're near Ilias Village," Shirou responds, answering the girl's question as accurately as possible.

"Who are you?" The girl asks tersely.

"My name is Shirou Emiya, a hero apprentice and temporarily the local blacksmith," Shirou responds, once again being as straightforward as possible.

"I see, you're unbaptized, that explains why you smell so...delicious," the girl says, and the glint she had in her eyes when she said that made Shirou a bit uncomfortable.

"Now, would you mind if I left so that I may go to receive my baptism? I'd rather not miss it," Shirou says as he starts to back off, getting ready to dash off at a moments notice.

"Stop," the girl says as she grabs him with her snake tail, "Ah, I understand your position now. Today is Ilias's birthday and you were about to head to your baptism."

"Yeah, and this tail is sort of in my way of me being able to go there, would you mind letting go of me?" Shirou says, obviously a bit irritated about being obstructed from leaving.

"Ilias's baptism, how foolish," the girl said, scoffing at the concept.

"I care nothing for the act of the baptism, just the results it has. It would make it much cheaper to travel around the world and be a hero with the discounts a formal baptism brings, now would you mind letting me go?" Shirou stated, obviously getting more irritated, as he moved his hands into a position where he could easily trace.

"How practical, however I have a question for you before I let you go. Why didn't you kill me while I was unconscious?" The girl asked, confused at why he had left her alive. For a moment, Shirou thought he had heard her wrong, to leave a person whos in need alone, let alone harming them while they are in such a state goes against his very being.

"What do you mean? Why would I kill an unconscious person even if they're a monster? Being a monster doesn't necessarily make a person my enemy." Shirou stated as if it were the most obvious thing on the planet.

"You, who is aiming to become a hero, whose goal is to kill the Monster Lord, don't consider all monsters to be your enemy?" Alice asked him, her tone of voice reminding him of Rin when he says something that she considers utterly idiotic.

"Personally, I have no problems with the Monster Lord, my goal as a hero is to save as many people as possible, and right now the best way to do so is for man and monster to live in coexistence."

"What?" The girl gave him a face very similar to the "You just said something utterly moronic so I'm giving you a chance to take that back" face.

"All I want is to save as many people as I can, and if the Monster Lord gets in the way, I will just have to find a way to persuade her to my way of thinking, with either words or deeds," Shirou declares with conviction in his words.

"You're an idiot," Alice bluntly stated, giving him the "Shirou why are you such an idiot" face that Rin flashed him on a near daily basis.

"I'm used to being called an idiot, and I know I can act quite stupidly at times, so being called one doesn't really affect me," Shirou said, shrugging off her insult like water on a ducks back.

"At least you know you're an idiot, but let me warn you, this perfect world you seek will never happen, monsters and humans can never live together in harmony. Now go little boy, you wouldn't want to miss your baptism, now would you?" The woman says, her voice full of contempt, as she releases Shirou.

"Hopefully I have enough time to get to my baptism still." Shirou said quickly as he ran off away from the snake woman toward the temple.

_ Watching the man leave, Alice quietly contemplated what she had just experienced. Starting with what she had seen in his eyes when she had first woke up. As she had stared deeply into the mans eyes, she had seen a glimmer of what laid in his soul, as the eyes are the windows to the soul. His eyes were those of someone who knew exactly how cruel the world was, someone who had been through hell and lived to tell about it. Which made his actions all the more perplexing. Why did he, who had wanted to be a hero, not kill her while she was unconscious? Why did he harbor such a naive desire to save everyone? Why was it that, despite what he had seen, he could still smile and act friendly towards someone not of his own species? These questions rolled around in Alice's head and they wouldn't go away. She decided that she would find out what made that man tick no matter the cost. So she set off, following his scent, so that she could figure out how his mind worked._

Unfortunately for Shirou, the time he spent helping the monster girl had made him late for his baptism, not that he regretted helping her at all, and caused him to to miss his baptism. He decided he should go home and prepare some dried foods and the like for his journey to cut down on the cost of buying them elsewhere, since his budget would be tighter without his hero discount. However Shirou was confident that between his skill at repairing most any item to his godly cooking skills, he would be able to keep a decent amount of money in his purse as he travelled.

When he walked into his house, he was greeted with an unexpected sight. The monster girl who he had encountered outside the village was in his house. That being said, Shirou was not going to waste this golden opportunity to see what monsters thought of his cooking. "Ah hello there, if you don't mind would you take a seat in the kitchen, I was going to make something to eat, and now that you're here it would be rude if I didn't make you something as well," Shirou said as he walked into the kitchen, preparing to make some lunch. The lamia gave Shirou a blank stare as he walked away.

"You're making me food without being asked to "Because it would be rude not to" and you don't even ask who I am or how I found your house? Not only that, you turn your back on a monster who could easily kill you at a moments notice?" She asked, dumbfounded by Shirou's actions.

"I figured I would ask those questions over a meal, and while you may be powerful, it is completely obvious to me that you have no hostile intents, I've been through enough to be able to tell if someone has ill intentions or not. Now, if you don't mind i'll be going back to cooking," Shirou said, as he continued on into the kitchen

"What if I do mind?" said the Lamia, indignant at how he brushed off her questions, despite how on the mark he was on her not having hostile intentions.

Shirou then slowly turned to her, and giving off an air of killing intent, he said to her in an even, yet menacing, tone of voice, "Then I would show you how wrong you are about being able to defeat me oh so easily." The lamia, who seemed quite distressed at Shirou's display, eeped and quickly made her way to the table and sat down.

_ After about an hour of waiting at the man's house, he finally returned home, and she had learned that he had missed his baptism. "Not that it would matter if he made it on time," Alice thought to herself, seeing as she had managed to give Ilias a black eye, and knowing that vain bitch, she would never show up to something like a baptism like that. After being dumbfounded by his behavior Alice called him on what she had thought was stupidity. She quickly learned it was not so. He told her with absolute certainty that he would have known if she had any ill intentions for him, and after she had not so subtly threatened him to force him to show a little more respect toward her, he had released an aura of death about him that managed to frighten HER. She then wondered if it was such a smart idea for her to have pursued this individual out of sheer curiosity, her worries dissipated as his aura dissipated as fast as it came, and he happily returned to cooking lunch. She hoped that the food would at least be decent, seeing as it appeared he lived on his own, so he had to cook for himself. If only she had known what was in store for her..._

After a few minutes, Shirou returned from the kitchen with two plates of food in hand, one for himself, and one for the lamia who was sitting at his table. Setting down the food in front of the lamia, she sniffed it suspiciously, like she thought it was poisoned or something, "Don't worry, its not poisoned or anything. Like I said earlier, I don't consider all monsters my enemies, and I would never do something as cowardly as poison someone," Shirou stated, slightly offended that she thought he was trying to kill her. After hearing that, she gingerly took a bite out of the food he just prepared for her, and then she froze as if someone had cast some sort of paralysis spell on her.

"Um, miss lamia, are you alright?" Shirou asked, worried that he had accidentally made something that didn't sit well with her species.

"I think I just came a little," Alice absentmindedly responded as she recovered from the shock of how absolutely godly Shirou's cooking was.

Shirou, not knowing how to respond to that, said, "I guess that means you like it?" Not even registering what Shirou said, Alice then began to eat at a pace that, if not for his living with Saber, Shirou would have thought impossible.

"Seconds," Alice said, holding out her plate expectantly. "Ok, but only after you answer some questions," Shirou responded, knowing that if he kept giving her food, he would never have his questions answered. The lamia seemed a little irked by that, but she seemed to understand.

"Well then, ask away," the lamia said, obviously trying to get the questions over and done with as fast as possible so that she could get more food.

"First things first, who are you, how did you find my house, and how did you manage to get into the village without causing pandemonium?" Shirou asked, trying to figure out the enigma that was the lamia sitting in front of him.

"To answer your first question, my name is Alipheese Fateburn the 16th, however you may call me Alice. To answer your second question, I followed your scent here, you have a rather...unique smell," Alice said, answering his questions as briefly as possible so she could go back to eating Shirou's godly cooking.

"What do I smell like? I'm a bit curious," Shirou asked, honestly wondering how he smelled to Alice.

"Its hard to put my finger on, but i think the best way to describe it is fire and steel." Shirou made mental note that Alice probably was not smelling him in the traditional sense, and that she detected magic like he did, through smell.

"And the third question?"

To that Alice shrugged and said, "I can be stealthy if I please." Not that it answered my question, but it was obvious he wasn't going to get that out of her. "Now that we got those pesky questions out of the way, seconds," Alice said, holding out her plate, obviously at the limit of her patience. Shirou shook his head, and brought her plate into the kitchen to get her some more food.

_ Now THAT was unexpected. She had expected him to possibly be able to make a passable dish, or maybe something she considered good. She did not expect that he would make something so delicious that she had a foodgasm. By the time she realized she had finished the first plate, she was holding out her plate for seconds. It was at that moment that she decided that no matter what she had to do, she WOULD be having this man travel with her. She didn't care if she had to square off with Ilias herself, she would have this mans cooking._

After Alice had finally managed to stuff herself to the point of bursting, an act that almost ate him out of house and home, she decided she had some questions of her own for Shirou. "Do you plan on becoming a hero, even though Ilias abandoned you?" Alice asked, seeming to be fishing for something.

"Yea, I was planning on packing up and leaving about an hour ago, but then I found you in my house, why do you ask?" Shirou asked, trying to figure out Alice's intentions for him.

"I was planning on traveling the world myself, and I was wondering if you would like to join me, seeing as you are just a human and all, it would be much safer if you traveled with me." Alice stated, obviously hiding the real reason she wanted him to travel with her.

"Nah, thanks for the offer though, I wouldn't want to bother you, and I'm pretty sure I can handle myself," Shirou replied, trying to fish the real reason she wanted him to come with out of her.

"Are you sure, there would be plenty of benefits to traveling with me, including having me taste your food so that you can bring your cooking to even greater heights," Alice said, which betrayed her less than altruistic reason for having him travel with her.

"You just want me to cook for you, don't you?" Shirou asked, unveiling the true reason she wanted him to go with her.

"Damn straight, and if you think about turning me down again, I will wrap you up in this tail and drag you along with me," Alice said, not even bothering to hide it anymore, and giving an ultimatum. Shirou thought that she must either love his cooking as much as saber or have brass balls to give him an ultimatum like that after his little demonstration of killing intent earlier.

"Well, I don't really mind as long as I can go around being a hero," Shirou said, giving in to her demands, but making sure he wasn't stuck as a kitchen slave in doing so.

"Will you be stopping in as many cities as possible, which would allow me to taste food all over the place?" Alice asked, her gluttony as obvious in her words as it was in her previous actions.

"Well, I was planning on it, seeing as people might need help," Shirou said, answering Alice's question as well as he could.

"Then you have yourself a deal, Shirou Emiya," Alice said, sealing the deal with Shirou. Ilias would look back on this moment and realise that this is when things started to go downhill for her.

** Authors Note: Hello people who have decided to read this, this is the first chapter of what will be a complete retelling of Monster Girl Quest with Shirou as the Main Character. Anyone familiar with MGQ will notice quite a few changes from canon already, and I plan to make quite a few more as time goes on. I was inspired to write this by Gabriel Blessing's "Shirou Emiya: Erogame Protagonist" as I found the concept interesting, however I found that he focused mainly on comedy in his work. I plan on making this a bit more serious, and it probably will get more serious than the game itself ever did. I found that the story of MGQ quite epic, and it had the potential for much greater as well. I probably will be doing updates every week or two at the very least, it all depends on how cooperative my muse is**

**I would very much appreciate reviews on this, as this is the very first work that I have published. Thank you, and I hope that you enjoyed this chapter and you will continue to enjoy it as time goes on.**


	2. Chapter 2

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the anything from the Fate/Stay Night Universe, owned by Type-Moon, or Monster Girl Quest, owned by Torotoro Resistance. All credit is given to the owners of their works. The only thing I will claim to own is the changes I have made to any character or the storyline that is not canon.**

**Wow I have gotten so many positive reviews and so many favorites and follows. I had no idea that this story would be so well received when I posted it. Thanks everyone, I hope you enjoy this next chapter as much as the last, and I hope you keep enjoying my story in the future.**

After Alice left so that she wouldn't be accidentally discovered by the villagers while Shirou prepared for his journey, he finished his packing and said goodbye to the villagers. Sure, he hadn't been there long and he didn't quite agree with their world view, but they were good people. The only reason they were so biased against monsters is because they didn't know any better. He made sure everything was in order before he left, since the town would no longer have a blacksmith, and it seemed that nothing essential would need repair any time soon, thanks to his handiwork.

After he was sufficiently far enough outside the village as not to be seen, Alice came out from the bushes she was hiding in and joined him on the road. He had been thinking about asking Alice a few questions about this world that the villagers didn't know, or would have been dangerous to ask the villagers about. "Something on your mind?" Alice asked, seeming to read his mind.

"Yeah, I don't believe I told you this before, but I have a little bit of amnesia, and there are a lot of things about the world that I don't know because the villagers didn't know the answers to my questions. Do you mind if I pick your brain for the answers? I'll make sure to make tonight's food even better than that rushed meal I made earlier." Shirou said, adding a little incentive to his question. Alice froze for a moment, unresponsive to the world. After a few moments Shirou started to get worried, and asked, "Alice, you ok?" "

Yeah, im ok," Alice responded, "Go ahead and ask your questions." Shirou thought he saw Alice drooling a little, but he decided to ignore it and just ask his questions.

After asking Alice about a variety of subjects, he was able to draw a few conclusions. First, the Monster Lord had a group of guards by the name of the Four Heavenly Knights, each corresponding to an element: Granberia, a dragonkin who was a master of fire, Tamamo, a nine-tailed kitsune who was a master of earth element, Alma Elma, a succubus who was a master of the wind, and Erubetie, a queen slime who was a master of water. Second, while magic was not unheard of, it was mostly limited to elemental spells and exclusively used by monsters. Third, critical ecstasy was caused by the magic passively emitted by monsters which overwhelmed men when they were at their weakest, during orgasm.

This led Shirou to think that he would be most likely immune to it, as long as he was running prana through his circuits at the time, which was not much to ask to be immune to one of the greatest weapons monsters have. He would have to see if Alice would help him test this theory somehow. Finally, he learned that the world was split into three continents, Ilias, Sentora, and Hellgondo, and that Ilias was the smallest, southernmost isle. She also told him all about different types of monster, how they lived, and about how they viewed the world. Shirou was fascinated by all of this, and how different the perceptions of two groups of people were.

It was a whole new experience for Shirou, as he had never been in a conflict that was so morally grey before. In the past, everything had been so cut and dry, the monsters were true monsters who fed on the blood of humans and enjoyed their suffering immensely. Here however, monsters lived their lives like normal people and only attacked humans because they needed humans to survive, and humans wouldn;t willingly help them due to their prick of a goddess. For once in his life, Shirou was at a loss about whose side he would take if he had to choose.

However, their conversation was cut short by Alice dashing off. "Huh, that was rude," Shirou said to himself. However, as he turned back to the road, intending to walk off out of sight, then wait for Alice to come back, just to tease her by making her think he left her behind, he noticed a woman in the middle of the road. At first glance, it appeared to be a beautiful woman wearing a long, grey, victorian dress. However, upon closer inspection, what he thought was the lower half of the dress was instead the lower body of a slug. She was a slug girl, Shirou realised.

"May I help you miss?" Shirou asked, trying to solve this as peacefully as possible.

"Yes, I am rather famished, and you smell...delicious, so if you would give me some of your semen, i'll be on my way," the slug girl said, looking at Shirou with the same perverted look the slime girl had. Not wanting to test his theory on critical ecstasy with an unknown monster,

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe I can do that," Shirou said, politely declining. "Well, that's too bad. I guess I will have to sate my hunger by force," the slime said as she readied herself to attack Shirou.

Not wanting to trace, seeing as he KNEW Alice was nearby watching him and he didn't want to reveal his powers to her quite yet, Shirou pulled the Kanshou and Bakuya that he had traced earlier out of the bundle he had hanging at his side. Wielding them menacingly, "You have one last chance, leave or I will be forced to resort to violence to drive you away," Shirou said.

"You humans are all bark and no bite, you all buckle under my sexual prowess just the same!" The Slime girl yelled as she rushed to tackle Shirou. However, she was far too slow. Without even having to reinforce himself, Shirou easily sidestepped her.

"You asked for it," Shirou said as he raked the swords across the back of the slug.

"AAAAAAAAH! That hurt!" the Slug girl yelled, backing away to a safe distance, "I'll remember this!" She said as she ran away, obviously impaired by the wound that he dealt her.

"I hope I didn't wound her too badly," Shirou said to himself as he sat down and began to clean the blood off his blades.

_As Alice watched from the bushes, she was confused by what she had seen. At first, Shirou had tried reasoning with the slug girl, trying to get her to leave peacefully. He had tried his hardest to get her to leave, and while she thought him stupid for trying, she commended his effort on trying not to hurt the girl. However, it was like he was a whole different person when it was obvious that negotiations had failed. His body posture changed, and when he drew his weapons it was if another person was talking. And when the slug girl charged him, he showed no hesitation in striking back. However, what really shocked her was how precisely he swung. She had expected him to be fairly amateur with his blades, however he had managed to land a perfectly non-lethal blow on the girl. _

_She recalled what she had been taught to her about swordsmanship: Any one can pick up a blade, most people can swing one, a trained swordsman can land a blow on most enemies, a good swordsman can land a lethal blow on his enemies, however only a great swordsman can land any blow of his choosing. So either it was a complete accident that he landed that strike on her, or he fell into the last category. Judging by the way he carried himself, she was willing to lay solid money on that. She wondered how a man who looked to her to maybe be 20 at most to have picked up such skill with a blade. It scared her to think another person like the person who taught her about swordsmen existed, almost as much as it intrigued her. She decided that she really had to figure out just who this Shirou Emiya person really was._

As Shirou was putting his swords away after getting all the blood and slime off of his weapons, Alice came slithering out of her hiding place. "So thats where you were hiding. I don't know why you did it, and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but I would like to know if this was a one time thing, or is this going to happen every time I encounter a monster?" Shirou asks, trying not to pry too much into Alice's personal life.

"Thank you for understanding, and yes, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to be there while you are fighting other monsters," Alice says, " Now, would you care to explain how someone your age became proficient enough with a blade to be able to land a non-lethal strike on something whose anatomy you do not know?" Alice asked, trying to figure out just how the hell he did what he did.

"I'm not quite sure actually, as I said before, I don't remember anything prior to a month ago," Shirou said, partly because he didn't want to drop his charade, and partly because he knew she would just look at him like he was crazy if he said he was from another dimension and he had been trained by the reincarnated spirit of the most skilled swordsman in the world and that he had inherited most of his technique from his future self who he had met in a 7 way death match for an omnipotent wish granting device.

_When she had asked him about how he had come across his skills, he had reminded her that he had "amnesia" which she didn't buy one bit. While it was true that he didn't know much about the world in general, it was obvious that he didn't have amnesia. After all, if he had wandered into Ilias village with amnesia and stayed there for a month, he would have been brainwashed by them and turned into another Ilias lemming. She knew he was lying, but she had no proof, so she couldn't call him on it, so she decided to bide her time until she could catch him in his lie and force him to tell her the truth. And after that, she would find a way to punish him, she hated being lied to._

After being silent for a moment, "Alright, in return for not asking about my circumstances, I'll buy that story, for now," Alice said, squinting her eyes in displeasure.

"Shit," Shirou thought to himself, "I knew she would realize that I was lying, but I didn't think she would catch on this quick."

After traveling for another hour or so, Shirou realized that it was starting to get dark outside. "Shall we set up camp?" Shirou asked, "It would be a big help to me if you put up the tent, that way I'll be able to get the fire going and food started quicker, which means you get fed sooner."

Alice took a moment to weigh her options, on one hand, she was a proud person who would normally never help a human set up camp, on the other hand, it meant she got food faster. The choice was obvious, "Of course, is over there fine?" Alice asked as she pointed to a flat piece of ground that appeared to be devoid of rocks.

"Sure, thanks a lot for helping out," Shirou replied. It hadn;t taken Shirou any time at all to figure out how to deal with Alice. All he needed to do was to give a reward of food, and she would be much more agreeable to anything that he would ask her to do. Naturally, it helped that he wasn't asking her to do anything but her share of the work, however, Shirou was absolutely sure that if he didn't have his godly cooking to break Alice with, she would be a far less agreeable person.

After about 20 minutes, Shirou left his vigil at the fire with food in tow. What he had made was something he was quite proud of, it was a curry dish he developed himself using the ingredients of this world. It had taken him a long time, and a lot of experimentation, to get it down but he had figured out how to replace most of the ingredients from his world, which were unavailable here, with things from this world. Hopefully, it would be pleasing to the princess of a lamia who was travelling with him.

"It's done," Shirou said to Alice, handing her the bowl and a spoon.

"What is it? I've never seen anything like it," Alice comments, looking at the dish, trying to figure out what was in it.

"It's a dish I created, I call it curry. It's a bit spicy so watch your tongue and make sure you don't eat it too quickly," Shirou warned her so that she didn't get mad at him for not warning her beforehand.

"Well then, let us see if it lives up to your boast of being better than what you had made earlier," Alice said, as she took a bite of his curry.

Again, she had a very unique reaction to Shirou's cooking, but it was different this time. She froze like last time, however Shirou saw a visible chill start from the end of Alice's tail, and work its way all the way up to the top of her head. As soon, as the chill dissipated, Alice quickly emptied the dish as quickly as she had done earlier in the day, however Shirou could swear her eyes were rolled back in their sockets. After sitting still for a moment, she came out of her...trance, (the best way Shirou had to describe it) and looked down at her empty bowl.

"Where did my food go?" Alice asked, looking around for the culprit who had stolen her food.

"You ate it all, I guess you were too overwhelmed at the taste to even remember eating it all it seems," Shirou replied, mostly to keep Alice from destroying the area in an attempt to find the person who had stole her food. "Well then, I guess that means it's time for second," Alice said as she held her bowl out. Shirou just shrugged his head and took her bowl back to the pot and refilled it.

_Alice had thought that there was no way that Shirou could have made something better than what he had given her earlier, that there was no way he could make something even better. So she eyed this "curry" with suspicion. However, all that went out the window, along with her consciousness, when she took a bite of it. One minute she's bathed in what could only be described in sheer ecstasy, the next she found her bowl empty and Shirou giving her a strange look. She then made a mental note never to take Shirou lightly when he talks about his cooking, which as she had just learned, could cause her body to react on its own if she were unprepared. _

After Alice was finished devouring the entirety of the curry Shirou prepared, minus the one bowl he had himself, Alice decided to speak up. "That was quite a good meal you prepared, I had not believed you when you said you could best your earlier cooking, but you proved me the fool," Alice admitted. Shirou was a little dumbfounded by this, seeing as he had definitely not pegged Alice as the type to admit her mistakes. A few minutes passed as they sat around camp and watched the stars as they digested.

"Hey Alice, I was wondering if you could teach me some monster sword techniques? I'm curious about how different they are compared to my own techniques," Shirou asked, hoping to learn how monsters fought, just in case he came across an enemy that would actually fight him with a sword, instead of trying to rape him. He knew it was wishful thinking considering who sent him here and how the world seemed, but a man can dream cant he?

"Normally I would never teach a human this, as they would probably be unable of accomplishing it, but seeing your earlier skill with blades, I think you may just be able to handle it," Alice said, looking over Shirou as if evaluating if he could do it or not.

After heading to a clearing, Alice asked Shirou if he could lend her one of his swords so that she could demonstrate the technique. Shirou obliged, handing her Kanshou and stepping back to watch her technique. When it was obvious he was paying attention, Alice started to demonstrate the technique. She held the sword at her front in a standard one handed sword stance, and then she rushed toward her invisible enemy, dropping as low as she could in the process, and the launchd herself from her lowered position, delivering a deep cut at her enemies throat. "The technique is called [Demon Decapitation], now I don't expect you to be able to perform it on your first try, but please make your best effort at the technique so I can show you where to correct yourself," Alice said as she gave his sword back, implying that there was no way a human could master the technique just by watching.

"Understood," Shirou said as he got into his basic stance, consisting of him having his swords at either side of his body. Without any further notice, Shirou rocketed himself from his position at the point that Alice had aimed at, keeping himself at a normal running position. However he dropped about a meter from the target point, and then almost too fast for Alice to keep track of, performed a scissor slice at the enemies neck, which would have lest most opponents headless.

_As Alice was demonstrating the move to Shirou, she knew that Shirou would be able to get this move down fairly quickly. However, she had no idea about how quickly or how well he would be able to perform the technique. Not only did he perfectly pull off the technique, he adapted it for a two handed sword style, and completely removed its obvious tell, on the first try. Alice was shocked to say the least. She knew that this man was a master swordsman, but she had figured it had been due to having practiced with a sword for his entire life. However, it became perfectly clear to her that, to this man, wielding a sword came to him as natural as breathing. He had true mastery of his swords, something that could have never been achieved by practice alone. _

"How was that?" Shirou asked, "I know I did it a bit differently than what you showed me, but that fits better into my fighting style. Is that ok?" However, despite having waited for a few moments to give Alice time to respond, nothing was said. "Uh, Alice, are you ok?" Shirou asks.

"Oh yea," Alice responds, "I was just a little surprised that you got it on your first try. How about we go to bed, it's getting late." "That makes sense," Shirou replied, "That way we can get moving early in the morning so we can make it to the next town by lunchtime." And so the two of them, headed off back to the campsite, where Shirou quickly made his way to his tent and bedroll, while Alice curled up around a tree.

"Are you sure you don't want any blankets or anything?" Shirou asks, worried since Alice is cold blooded, being a Lamia and all.

"No, I'm quite fine the way I am," she responds tiredly. "Well then, good night," Shirou says as he tucks himself into his bedroll and falls fast asleep.

Shirou slowly wakes to find himself in a strange place, it seemed he was floating in a sea of golden clouds. Suprised by his surroundings, which he knows are not a dream, since the only dreams that are allowed to him are of swords. He figures that he was contacted by some sort of telepathic communication, so he decides to look around for the person who contacted him. As he is looks around, a woman with long blonde hair, blue eyes, angel wings, and elf ears appears before him. He's instinctually on edge, seeing as the last person who he encountered with elf ears had stolen his and Rin's servants and if it weren't for their planning and some damn good luck, they would have been dead.

The woman, who noticed that Shirou had noticed her, began to speak, "Shirou Emiya, I am Ilias, the one true goddess of this plane, and I have come to speak with you." Shirou was sort of expecting this sooner or later, seeing as the old pervert had warned him about her.

"What do you want with me, Ilias?" Shirou asked, narrowing his eyes. She seemed a little put off by the fact that a human would dare to do anything but grovel at her feet.

"You aren't a native to this plane are you, human?" She asked, trying to be as condescending to him as possible, to put him in his place so to speak.

"What of it, it's not as if I intruded upon your domain of my own free will, I was sent here against my will," Shirou said, cursing Zelretch for sending him to such a perverted place.

"What do you mean you didn't come here of your own volition? And where do you come from, and how did you get here at that?" Ilias asked.

"Do you want the long version or the short version?" Shirou asked, hoping she asked for the short version so he could leave as soon as possible before he did something to get himself smited.

"The short version first, and if it is lacking in details, the long one," Ilias responded.

"A wizard did it," Shirou said, mostly because he had always wanted to use that line.

After waiting a few moments to see if there were any other details forthcoming, Ilias responded, "Uh, I think I might need the long version."

Sighing, Shirou responded, "I got in a fight with my girlfriend, and she happened to be the apprentice of the only one in my universe who can send people to alternate dimensions. Apparently, something happened here and this place was in need of a hero, so my girlfriend, who is a bit vindictive, decided to volunteer me for the task, and thats how I ended up here."

"Would that man be named Zelretch by any chance?" Ilias asked, seeming to understand the situation.

"Yea, and just how did you meet the old pervert?" Shirou asked, curious as to how this, what appeared to be paragon of virtue, meet the perverted old vampire known as Zelretch.

"Well, this one time he happened to randomly drop by this plane, and this was back before humans were anywhere near as advanced as they are today, so his appearance was quite strange, so I had my angels bring him up to meet me, and thats how we met. You must be the hero he sent to help me out then?" Ilias asked.

"Yea, I guess I am. How did you get that old pervert to do anything, nobody in our dimension ever figured it out?" Shirou asked, intrigued about how she got the damn vampire to do anything.

"Let's just say he owes me from a bet we made, and leave it at that. I guess that's all the time we have. Do make sure to kill the monster lord for me, bye~" Ilias says as she return Shirou to his body.

"Sigh, I hope I don't have to deal with that bitch too often," Shirou mutters to himself as he gets up. He looks over to the tree where Alice was sleeping last night, and finds her still curled up around it. Looking closely, she looked a lot different when she was asleep. Instead of the perpetually stern face that she wore when she was awake, she had a quite relaxed sleeping face. The difference between the two made it quite cute to Shirou, and it reminded him a little bit of Saber. Shirou then decided to go prepare breakfast for the two of them before he woke Alice up, partly out of habit of dealing with Rin in the mornings, and partly because he was a bit irritated about that annoying goddess who disrupted his dreams of swords.

While Shirou was cooking breakfast, Alice woke up and began to slither over to him. "you're quite the early riser," she commented, "Whatcha making?" "Right now I'm making a dish called a rice omelet, I do believe you will like it. It's made with rice and chicken eggs," Shirou responded as he finished cooking. Shirou then proceeded to give Alice her portion of breakfast, and sat down to eat. While she didn't show any major reaction to the food, she was obviously pleased with it.

Shirou and Alice then set out for Iliasburg, and they made quite a good pace. "So Alice, you look like you're excited about something," Shirou asked, noting the excitement on Alice's face.

"In Iliasburg there is a famous inn by the name of the Sutherland Inn, and its famed for its Ama-Ama dango," Alice said, salivating at the thought of having those godly dango.

Shirou, a little confused about how she would be able to get into town in the first place, asked, "How do you plan on getting to the dango? it is in the middle of a human settlement, and you would just cause panic if you go in like that."

"Don't worry I can make myself look human if I have to," Alice responding, waving off his concerns, "Now lets get to those Dango!"

After about another half hour of traveling they finally arrived at Illiasburg, and Alice had transformed into her human form outside the city. However, as Shirou walked into the city, he saw nobody. No merchants, no residents, no soldiers. Nobody. However, after a moment, he heard the clashing of swords near the town square. "Someones in trouble Alice, lets go!" Shirou yelled at Alice as he ran off toward the source of the violent crashing.

When he arrived there, he saw a monster girl, a dragonkin, if memory serves him right, wielding a sword while standing over the bodies of collapsed, not dead as far as Shirou could tell, soldiers. She was complaining that there was nobody strong to fight in the city as she dealt with three guards, yawning as she did so. Shirou then realized who it was that they were facing, courtesy of the information Alice had provided him. It was Granberia, Heavenly Knight of Flame, a monster who was considered peerless in her mastery of the sword.

He had been hoping to meet her, as Shirou considered her to be the most likely person to give him anything near a fight instead of them trying to jump him while he defended his chastity. As he watched, she quickly knocked out the three remaining knights who were opposing her. "Is that it!? Having your city taken over by a monster...There's no complaints?" Granberia yelled, obviously a challenge aimed at all who were in earshot.

"I will accept your challenge, Granberia, Heavenly Knight of Fire!" Shirou yelled in response as he strode out into the square, ready to draw Kanshou and Bakuya.

"Ohoho, a man with some guts. I like that. If I am to fight you, draw your swords and name yourself," Granberia responded, obviously pleased by his acceptance of her challenge.

"My name is Shirou Emiya, hero, and I demand that if I defeat you that you take your leave of this place. However, before we begin, maybe we should take this somewhere else. I would not want to harm innocent bystanders, and I would hope that you would not either," Shirou replied, making his intentions known.

"What a splended idea, Shirou Emiya. How about we relocate to the field outside the city?" Granberia suggested.

"Fine by me, let us meet there as soon as possible. I have heard your reputation, and I have wanted to cross blades with you for a while now," Shirou replied before dashing off to the designated area.

**Authors Note: Wow, I did not expect to get this chapter out so quickly. My muse has been as talkative as sylph lately, but luckily shes far more intelligent and doesn't just babble like her. As usual, reviews are highly appreciated. forum/A-Tale-of-Swords-and-Scales-The-Evaluation-Room/152540/ Here's a link to the forum I made for anyone who is interested in theorizing about what will happen or would like to talk about what has happened already. I might just get the next one out as fast as I got this one out, but that all depends on if I can the inspiration to write. I decided to end this chapter on a cliffhanger because I think the fight between Shirou and Granby deserves to be the main feature of a chapter, and there was quite a bit in this chapter already. As always, I appreciate all my viewers and I hope you enjoy the chapters to come**


	3. Chapter 3

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the anything from the Fate/Stay Night Universe, owned by Type-Moon, or Monster Girl Quest, owned by Torotoro Resistance. All credit is given to the owners of their works. The only thing I will claim to own is the changes I have made to any character or the storyline that are not canon.**

**Now, for the moment viewers have been waiting for since I posted the last chapter, Shirou's battle against Granberia. **

_As Granberia headed out to the battlefield, the events of the invasion played through her head. She had come here to create a base of operations so that she could launch an attack on the Temple of Ilias south of here that produced the heroes that preyed on weak monsters. She had come here expecting to tear through everything in her path. Not surprisingly, nobody she challenged had put up a fight. Most had ran noiselessly, and the ones that had stayed were too frozen with fear to put up a fight. _

_"Heroes," she spat, "More like cowards who prey on the weak." However, there was one man who had interested her. The man she was going to face now. He was no ordinary man from what she could tell. There had been steel in his words when he had accepted her challenge. Unlike the others, he had stood tall and proud in the face of danger, swaying none at her presence. She had never faced a monster who had such steel, let alone a human. "This is going to be interesting, I hope he can put up a decent fight," Granberia thought to herself, hoping that her opponent would not disappoint her._

After waiting a few minutes at their designated meeting spot outside town, Shirou spotted his opponent walking towards him. Unlike himself, she had walked slowly to the spot, instead of running at full speed. Shirou noticed her presence, stood up, and got ready to fight. "I'm ready whenever you are, Granberia," Shirou declared as he got into position.

"Ready? Do you intend to fight me barehanded, Emiya Shirou? If so you are a greater fool than I took you for," Granberia noted, pointing out the lack of swords in his hands, drawing her sword.

"Well then, since we are both ready, let us begin!" Shirou said as he rushed Granberia, tracing a pair of Kanshou and Bakuya as he did so. Granberia did not have time to react to the appearance of the swords before she found herself besieged by his strikes. Recovering from the surprise appearance of his blades, she managed to launch a few retaliatory blows, all of which were skillfully dodged or parried by Shirou. However the strikes forced Shirou back, putting some distance between the two of them.

"Well played, Shirou Emiya. No human has ever managed to dodge, let alone parry, one of my attacks before. You are far more skilled than any opponent I have ever faced. It seems I cannot hold back anything if I wish to defeat you," Granberia declared, setting her sword ablaze.

"Well then, I guess its time for me to get serious as well. Trace On," Shirou responded as the trigger was pulled and he flooded prana into is body, reinforcing himself. The two of them squared off at each other, and suddenly they launched at one another faster than before. Granberia, who was slightly faster on the draw, launched a strong sweeping blow at Shirou's waist. In response, Shirou brought up his swords to block the blow, and used the momentum of the blow to knock himself out of her range.

Quickly, he brought to mind the technique that Alice had showed him last night, [Demon Decapitation]. Reinforcing his legs further, he dashed at Granberia, who launched a sword strike at his neck as he closed into her range. Ducking as fast as possible, he barely managed to get under her strike, feeling the heat of the flaming blade as it passed. Using the downward momentum of his duck, he pushed himself off the ground as hard as possible, as he executed the final part of his new technique, the decapitating strike. Realizing what Shirou was about to do at the last moment, Granberia managed to throw herself backward, avoiding a fatal decapitation. However, she was not completely able to avoid the strike, and the blades put two perfectly parallel gouges on her breastplate. She did however, manage to hit Shirou in retaliation, sending him flying as he barely managed to block a fatal strike. Once again, the warriors found themselves staring each other down.

"You continue to surprise me, Shirou Emiya. Where did you learn that technique, it was modified, but that was definitely the cursed sword skill, [Demon Decapitation], and how exactly did you manage to pull blades out of nowhere?" Granberia inquired, trying to figure out what other tricks he might have up his sleeve.

"If you manage to defeat me, I would gladly explain where I learned that technique. However, if I win, you must leave this town in peace. As for the blades from nowhere, it's a rather unique skill I have, and fully explaining it would interrupt our battle. If you defeat me, I shall explain afterwards," Shirou responded.

"Very well then, let us finish this with our next attacks!" Granberia yelled as she charged Shirou.

"Spirit and Technique flawless and firm, Our strength rips the mountains," Shirou chanted, throwing his blades at Granberia, which she easily dodged. However, before she had the chance to taunt him for missing, he had another pair of swords in hand and was charging her.

"Our Swords split the water, Our names reach the imperial villa," Shirou incanted as he brought his swords down at Granberia. Granberia parried the strikes, only realizing at the last moment what was about to happen. As the swords Shirou had thrown earlier came back around, attracted by the swords in his hands, she managed to barely avoid a fatal blow. However she did not emerge unscathed, as the swords had nicked her sides as she had dodged. Shirou once again threw his blades at her, and once again she deflected them.

Shirou traced his third and last set pair of swords, "The two of us cannot hold heavens together, Two great men, sharing a life," Shirou incanted as he pumped prana into his swords. And as he charged Granberia, his swords began to change, they became longer, they became brittle, they became dangerous. They became broken.

"Shit!" Granberia yelled, knowing she was boxed in by his attack and the flying swords.

"VAPORIZING FLAME REBELLION!" "CRANE WING THREE REALM!" They both yelled as their swords clashed, and the result of their duel was decided.

After their violent exchange, Shirou was still standing, however he had not escaped unscathed. He had numerous burns across his arms, the rest of him spared only due to the reinforced clothing he wore, which was now very worse for the wear, and he had expended roughly 50% of his Od. Granberia was still standing, however she was far more visibly wounded. She had lacerations from Crane Wing Three Realm running all over her body, in fact a few shards of Kanshou and Bakuya's overedge form could be seen embedded in her armor, and the fact that she was still standing was a testament to her sheer willpower.

She had not only survived the ultimate technique of a monster-killing noble phantasm, but she was still able to stand afterwards. That alone was praiseworthy. Breathing heavily, Shirou called out to Granberia, "I had expected... you to survive, however I had no idea... you would still be able to stand... after taking a strike... from Crane Wing."

"The only other person... who has wounded me so... was the Monster Lord. I had never expected... to have to go all out... on a human... let alone not win... by doing so," Granberia replied, equally impressed by Shirou as Shirou was by her, and equally out of breath. "I admit... this is my loss... and I will fall back," Granberia said, "But I expect... to have a rematch... with you again... after we both have recovered... and I WILL defeat you then." Granberia declared.

"Agreed... and I look forward... to seeing how... you will have honed... your skills," Shirou replied. And with that, Granberia nodded and teleported away.

_Alice was dumbfounded. She had followed the pair out here to break the two of them up when Shirou was about to be beaten. However, this had not come to pass. He had not only held his own against the greatest swordswoman alive, but he managed to defeat her, if only just barely. She was stunned not only by this, but by his fighting style. His style was full of openings, all of which, if taken advantage of, would be fatal. Yet, he used those holes to lure his attacker into attacking in ways he could predict. However, if he were ever a split second too slow, it would result in his death. He was suicidal! _

_Not only that, but he had made swords APPEAR OUT OF THIN AIR like magic. Magic was supposed to be the realm of powerful monsters and elementally based, yet he, a mere human, had managed to use magic that was completely alien to her. She didn't know whether to congratulate him for his victory, berate him for his suicidal sword style, or ask him what the hell he was, because he was obviously not human. She decided on the last two._

"What the hell was that," Alice asked him, giving him the Rin Tohsaka "Why are you such a suicidal moron" look. "I'll explain in private, and please, no matter how insane what I'm about to tell you sounds, it is most definitely the truth, so let us head to that inn and get you some dango to eat while I explain," Shirou said, heading back to the city while trying to figure out just how to explain to Alice that he was a magus from another dimension who could reproduce any weapon he had seen with near perfect accuracy. Shirou knew that this would be a long, long night.

As he walked into the city, he was greeted by the cheers of grateful villagers. "Thank you so much! If you hadn't shown up, this would have become a monster city!" One man exclaims.

"It was nothing really, I just did my job as a hero," Shirou replied, embarrassed by the praise he received.

"You, Citizen A over there, I have a question," Alice said to a rather ordinary looking man.

"How could I be called Citizen A when I have such a magnificent name as Cervantes!" The man replied angrily.

"I don't really care. Where is the Sutherland Inn?" Alice asked the man.

"Ah... just head to the west of here, its an incredibly old Inn, it will stick out," he replied.

"Let's go Shirou, I have dango to eat, and many, many questions to ask," Alice said to Shirou, grabbing him by the wrist and practically dragging him to the Inn.

When Shirou and Alice arrived at the inn, Alice promptly dragged Shirou inside. On a sign plate on the reception desk was the going rate for a night at the inn. 2,400,000 gold a night, per person, hero rate 2 gold per person per night. "Alice, theres no way we can stay here. I'm not a baptized hero, and I don;t happen to have 4.8 million gold on me," Shirou stated flatly.

"Well then, you should have let Granberia take over the town so that we could actually stay here," Alice said, quite unhappy with the fact that she wouldn't be getting her dango. While they were talking, one of the men who had their asses handed to them by Granberia walked up to the counter and rung the bell. A middle aged woman walked out and he promptly declared he was a hero and he wanted to stay here for the hero rate of 2 gold per night. She immediately kicked him out saying that no true hero would have been beaten so badly by a monster.

She then turned to Shirou and said, "You're the man who defeated Granberia! You simply must stay here for the night!"

"But I don't happen to have the money on me to stay, and I was never baptized as a hero," Shirou replied honestly.

"Don't worry about that, a baptism doesn't make a hero, actions make a person a hero, so don't worry about it, the rate is 2 gold per night per person and I'll bill the rest to Ilias temple," She said to Shirou. Shirou, about to deny the generous offer, was promptly shut up by a swift elbow to the side by Alice.

"We'd love to take you up on your offer, would you mind showing us to our room? Also, would you mind bringing some dango for us?" Alice said, glaring at Shirou for almost denying her her dango.

"This way then," said the woman, "And there are some dango in the room already, if you hadn't shown up when you did, I would have gone looking for you to get you to spend the night here."

"Perfect, now would you mind leaving us alone for a while, my friend and I have some rather important things to talk about," Alice said, glaring at Shirou

After closing the door of the room, Alice asked, "Now tell me, who are you and how did you manage to use magic when you're obviously human, and tell the truth, I absolutely detest being lied to," Alice said, giving Shirou quite the dirty look.

"As I said before, my name is Shirou Emiya and I am quite human as you said. However, where I come from, some humans are able to use magecraft, we are called magi," Shirou explained.

"I've never heard of a place on this planet where there are humans that are born able to use magic," Alice said, eyeing Shirou skeptically.

"That is because you couldn't possibly have heard of it. I am not from this dimension. I was sent here by a man by the name of Zelretch, who possesses the ability to interfere with alternate worlds. Simply put, i'm an alien existence to this plane," Shirou said bluntly.

"That's insane," Alice said, "There is no way magic could do something like that, it's impossible."

"Oh it is very possible with the second true magic, because what you think of magic is really magecraft where I come from. Magecraft is the manipulation of the world using human wisdom and power, whereas magic is neither, it is the power to draw upon the root of all creation, Akasha. From what I can tell, the magecraft in this dimension invokes some sort of elemental spirit, correct?" Shirou asks, attempting to confirm his hypothesis.

"Well, yes, magic is performed by invoking one of the four elemental spirits, why do you ask, is your "magecraft" different?" Alice asks, seeming to catch on.

"Very much so, magi have things in their body called magic circuits, they allow us to take od, essentially life force, and use it to fuel our spells. However, magi in our dimension are limited to what kinds of spells we can use by our elemental affinity and origin. I have a rather...unique ability due to this. I am fairly useless when it comes to most forms of tradional magic," Shirou admitted, "However I have three abilities that I cannot be matched in by anyone."

"And those are?" Alice said, prompting him to continue.

"It will be easier to give demonstrations of the first two. I'll start with reinforcement. Would you mind handing me that dango stick you are done with?" Shirou asked. Silently Alice handed him the wooden stick that her dango were served on. "Trace On," Shirou incanted as he pulled the trigger in his mind, flooding the stick with prana. "Now, try to break the stick," Shirou told Alice.

"Simple enough," Alice replied as she took the stick back. However, when she tried to break the stick using the amount of force that seemed appropriate given that it was just simple wood, it didnt break. Alice, put more and more strength into it, and when she had put enough effort into it to break a steel sword, it finally broke. "What the hell was that?" Alice asked, confused on how it took that much strength to break a simple wooden stick.

"That was reinforcement, I can pour my magic into anything, including my own body, reinforcing its existence. For example, if I were to reinforce a sword, not only would it get harder to break, like you saw with the stick, it would become sharper. Another example is when I reinforce my eyes, it allows me to see in better detail and allows me to follow movements that would be normally too fast for me to comprehend."

"That sounds like an extremely useful ability, however there has to be some limitation to it, or else you would have completely wiped the floor with Granberia," Alice commented, showing how perceptive she was.

"Yes, there indeed is a limit. If I poor too much magic into an object, it gets destroyed," Shirou states, "If you would like an example I could show you with another one of those dango sticks."

"No, I understand. What about your second ability?" Alice inquires, not letting him stop there.

"My second ability is called Tracing, it is what allows me to create those swords out of nowhere. It allows me to perfectly replicate a blade that I have knowledge of, seeing as you have seen it in action I assume you do not need a demonstration."

Alice nodded in affirmation, "And the third power?"

"My third power is the basis of the other two," Shirou says, "It is hard to explain, but to put it simply, it allows me to know everything there is to know behind a weapon as soon as I see it. This allows my tracing to not only reproduce the shape of a weapon, but the magical properties of the blade, and even the techniques of the user of the blade," Shirou said as he Traced the sword Granberia had been holding earlier. Alice's eyes widened as the blade was set ablaze, just as Granberia had done earlier.

"Any questions?" Shirou asked, dismissing the blade.

"You said you were born with your powers, does that mean you inherited your abilities from your parents?" Alice asked.

"I'm not sure, I don't even remember what my parents looked like. A large fire destroyed my hometown when I was five, I was the only survivor. And even then it hardly counts to call me a survivor of that fire," Shirou said, recalling the events that led him to be what he is today.

"What do you mean?" Alice asked, wondering what he meant by that.

"The person who I was before the fire died there, by the time that the person who raised me found me, I was pretty much an empty shell of a person. In fact, the reason why I want to be a hero to this day is because of the smile he had on his face when he found me, it was like he was the that was saved, not me. From that day on, I was no longer the person I was before the fire, I was Shirou Emiya. I do not even remember what my name was prior to that. To me, I was born that day in the fire. I have no memories prior to that," Shirou replied, remembering it all again.

"So it was your adoptive father who taught you your power?" Alice asked again.

"Yes and no, he was the one who taught me the very basics of my power, but that was after I had bugged him to no end to. In fact, he didn't want me to become a magus, he wanted me to live a normal life, something he had been denied. In the end, he died about five years after he adopted me, and It was another 6 years before I found the people who taught me everything I know, be it swordplay or magic," Shirou replied as he thought of Rin and Saber.

_Alice was conflicted by the revelation of Shirou's past. Just the fact that not only did alternate worlds exist, he was from one of them, and there some humans were able to perform strange magics that were far different than her own. However, she could not do anything but believe as he demonstrated his powers for her first hand, and the sincerity in his voice as he explained his background made her unable to do anything but believe him. She knew there was more to the story with his own past, however she was not going to press him to tell her, as she had her own family issues, and he had respected her privacy. She would be content with this, and while she hoped to learn more, she would leave it entirely in his court whether he wanted to tell her or not. However she was a bit curious about who taught him what he knew, and she decided to ask just this one last thing._

"Who taught you your magic and swordplay? They must be extremely powerful if they are the one's who taught you what you know," Alice commented, seemingly interested in his life.

"Well, Their names are Rin and Saber, and they were my lovers, Rin is a genius magical prodigy, however her magic is far different than mine, so all she really did was teach me the basics of what I know. I developed the rest on my own. Saber, is a genius swordswoman, however she was more of a sparring partner. I could never imitate her style due to differences in our stature and weaponry. She did, however help me refine my style over many training sessions, making it so that I never miss a parry at my openings," Shirou replied, reminiscing about his own world.

"Lovers? As in plural?" Alice said, looking at Shirou incredulously, "I didn't peg you for the sort of man to see one girl behind another's back."

"Oh, actually they knew about each other. We all lived in the same house together and we got along just fine. In fact, if Saber would walk in on Rin and me, Rin would rope Saber into a threesome. And if Rin walked in on us, She would happily jump in. It was that kind of relationship." To that, Alice looking entirely flabbergasted, as a lamia, she was prone to extreme jealousy, and she had no idea how that kind of relationship could work out.

"I find that harder to believe than this "magecraft" you practice," Alice replied, "How the hell did you end up in this sort of relationship?"

Shirou was a bit reluctant to revisit the events of the grail war and simply said, "It involves a summoning, a magic cup, and all the worlds evil. Beyond that, I won't say."

After that, the two of them were silent for a while, as Alice finished her Dango that the landlady had left for her. "Well that was quite a good appetizer, I guess it is time for the main course," Alice said, while licking her lips and giving Shirou quite the seductive stare. Shirou knew that look, after all it was the same look that both the slime and the slug girl had given him. Knowing that this was the perfect opportunity to test his hypothesis about critical ecstasy, since he was pretty sure that Alice didn't intend to break him if it didn't work, after all, he was her traveling partner, and more importantly, her cook.

"I know exactly what you want Alice, and I will allow you to do so on one condition," Shirou said to Alice.

"What condition?" Alice said replied, narrowing her eyes.

"That if I fall under critical ecstasy, you allow no harm to befall me until I am back in control of my body."

"Don't you mean when?" Alice said, eyeing Shirou suspiciously.

"I think I have a way to counter it, but without trying it, due to my lack of knowledge on the specific mechanics of it, I cannot say for certain. Do you agree to my terms or not?" Shirou asked Alice, making sure to get her to agree.

"Normally i'd call such a thing impossible, and call you an idiot for even thinking it up, but it seems that logic turns off when you're around, so I will agree to your terms, and see if you're right or not," Alice said, slipping off everything Shirou was wearing below his waist. Shirou just hoped that if Rin ever found out about this, which he had hoped she never would, she would forgive him as he was doing it for the sake of advancing magical knowledge. Alice grinned at him as she noticed the look of distress on his face, and began to help herself.

_Rin would not forgive this. Shirou was getting a blowjob from a woman who wasn't herself or Saber, a half snake monster thing at that. She knew that Shirou was doing it for a good reason, and the magus inside of her was happy that he was doing it, but her womanly heart would not stand for this. She took the mystic code that Zelretch had given her to allow her to monitor his progress on his journey, grabbed Saber, who was watching the whole thing with her, currently shocked at what Shirou was doing, and stormed off to Zelretch's office, intending to give that damn pervert a piece of her mind until he agreed to send her and Saber there with him._

As it turns out, he was immune to critical ecstasy, however what he wasn't immune to was having a snake tail wrapped around him so he couldn't struggle after it was proved he was immune to it. Alice continued to feed, for a lack of a better word, off Shirou until he was completely dry.

"Thanks for the meal, Shirou," Alice said.

"I didn't expect you to suck me dry when you said you wanted to have the main course," Shirou said, completely out of energy after Alice's dinner.

"You tasted quite different than any other human," Alice said, "It was like there was magical energy inside of it."

"That's because a Magus eliminates excess prana through bodily fluids, especially semen. It's basis of mana exchange through tantric rituals. Now, I'm going to pass out now so that I don't sleep in extremely late tomorrow," Shirou explained, and then promptly passed out.

"Good night, Shirou," Alice responded, as she laid down to sleep herself.

_Alice recalled how absurd today had been. First, he defeats Granberia, the greatest swordswoman alive, who had brough HER to her knees, even if it was a close victory. Second, Shirou reveals that not only is he from an alternate dimension, but that he uses magic far different from the type used here, and that there are far more powerful magics in his home world. Last , but not least, the man proves to be immune to critical ecstasy, the greatest weapon monsterkind has, and the only hope they have, besides maybe Granberia, of defeating Shirou if he ever decided to go on a killing spree. Well, that wasn't something she really had to worry about, given his normally gentle personality, but he possibility did scare her a little. "At least hes on our side," Alice thought to herself, as she fell asleep. _

_That night, she dreamed that a dark haired woman was out to get her for some reason, and it was more than a bit scary. Alice Hoped it was just a figment of her imagination, and if not, she would not have to encounter this mysterious black haired woman any time soon._

**Author's Note: This chapter took a little longer to get out because I was trying to get the battle scene right, and also the whole explanation of his magic to Alice was a bit harder than I had anticipated too. As to why he gave the challenge in the last chapter, and as to why he was willing to experiment with critical ecstasy was due to his time with Saber and Rin. Shirou is sort of a broken shell of a person, and before the VN, all that filled him was the desire to help others. Naturally, being around people with strong personalities like Rin and Saber for long periods of time would color his personality a bit, at least in my opinion.**

** And as to why he isn't freaking out about sexual situations, he lived with Rin and Saber in a relationship where kinky three ways probably happened regularly. And I have good money on Rin being quite the closet pervert, and him and Saber being the targets of said perversion. And the mystic code that Zelretch left her, if anyone has questions about that, is exactly like something Zelretch would do, just to mess with Rin. Anyway, Leave me comments on any suggestions you have for me, and I hope you liked the chapter, and I hope you will continue to read and like the chapters yet to come.**


	4. Chapter 4

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the anything from the Fate/Stay Night Universe, owned by Type-Moon, or Monster Girl Quest, owned by Torotoro Resistance. All credit is given to the owners of their works. The only thing I will claim to own is the changes I have made to any character or the storyline that are not canon.**

**Just a note, unreliable narration is a thing in this. Just because one character states something, doesn't make it true. Also, to those who were noting that Alice is an echidna, Shirou wouldn't know that, even if it were true, so he refers to her as a lamia. Also it never once mentions in the game at all that she is an echidna, even in the monsterpedia. **

**Now for the feature presentation.**

Waking up, Shirou found himself in a very odd position. He remember having passed out last night after what happened last night, however he was in a significantly different position than he had passed out in. He remember that she had released him before he had passed out, but now he found himself coiled up from the chest down, with his arms free, in the sleeping Lamia's tail. He also found himself with his arm around her human portion. Shirou had no explanation for why Alice had decided to use him like she frequently used trees while they were camping, however he had a speculation as to why his arm was around her. He was too used to sleeping with other people, and his body, it seems, has taken up the habit of grabbing onto nearby people while hes asleep.

Shirou contemplated on how exactly to extricate himself from this situation, however he couldn't think of a good way to do so. He was fairly used to grabby sleepers, Rin herself was one, however the matter was completely different seeing as it was a snake tail grabbing onto him and not someone's arms. He then decided that he would just have to bite the bullet and try to wake Alice up so she could free him. "Alice? Could you please wake up?" He pleaded as he gently shook her shoulder, "I'm kinda stuck here." After a few shakes, Alice slowly began to wake up. She stretched a little and she began to sit up, or she tried to, and then realized the position she was in.

"Now how did that happen?" Aliced asked, confused on how her tail had ended up wrapped around Shirou.

"I was hoping to have you explain that." Shirou deadpanned. Accepting the fact that neither of them would find out exactly how their current situation came to be, Alice unwrapped herself from around Shirou and they proceeded to start their day

As they walked out of the inn, the owner of the inn walked up to them. "Sounds like you two had a lot of fun last night," She said, referring to their little romp that had happened the night before.

"Were we really that loud?" Shirou said, a bit distressed that someone had heard what had happened last night.

"Haha, was I right? It was just a lucky guess," the owner responded, and Shirou felt quite dumb for falling for it. Alice, on the other hand, looked unfazed by it. She was a monster after all, Shirou thought, it wouldn't do for her to be embarrassed about things of this nature. "Be sure to come again," the owner said enthusiastically, "I'll be glad to welcome you any time." And with that, Shirou and Alice headed to the market.

After walking around the market for the while and talking to people, Shirou and Alice made their way to a Weapons and Armor Shop. Since Shirou's clothes had been damaged by his fight with Granberia, he figured it would do to get some new ones. His pants and shoes had held up fine, however his shirt definitely could use a replacement.

After a while of looking around the shop and not finding what he wanted, Shirou was about to leave the store, however something in the corner caught his eye. It was a woven shirt, and if it weren't for his passive structural analysis he wouldn't have seen anything particularly interesting with it. It was a very, very sturdy piece of clothing, and it was light as well. It fit what he needed it for perfectly. He then brought it up to the clerk, who commented that he had a good eye for armor, and lamented that heroes only cared about armor's looks and not its functionality nowadays. He slipped the shirt on and the two of them went back to the market.

As the two of them were walking out of the city, Shirou hears a very familiar voice calling out to him, "Hey, you, Saber's Master, come over here!" He almost keeps walking because it should be impossible that he was here, he had died protecting Rin after all. Then again, he was in a realm and he was sent here by Zelretch, so anything was possible, so he headed over to the source of the voice. Sure enough, he was greeted by Lancer, who was dressed in fairly normal attire for the period, instead of his usually blue jumpsuit armor.

"Who is this?" Alice asked, eyeing the man suspiciously.

"Oh, he's someone from the dimension I'm from, speaking of that however, why are you here Lancer, I thought you died?" Shirou asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Well, as the mansion was burning down and I was dying, some old vampire with a cane popped out of a portal and offered me a job. Naturally I accepted seeing as I had nothing better to do. After he patched me up somehow, he dropped me through a portal and I landed here about a week ago, with a note saying I was to find out as much about what was going on on this continent and pass it on to you, dunno why though." Lancer said, shrugging.

"So what did you find?" Shirou asked, interested.

"Well, apparently there's some monster bandits out to the west of here, a dragon and a vampire are included, and there's some trouble going on in a village to the east by the name of happiness village, it seems like harpies have been abducting all the males in the village, nothing you can't handle seeing as you're still here after who I last saw you fighting," Lancer commented, referring to his earlier battle with himself.

"Thanks for the information, it should be useful," Shirou said, thanking him.

"Don't worry about it, just doing my job," Lancer said, "Now that I've passed that information along, theres a pretty hot girl over there, and it's been a while since I spent time with a lady, so I'll see you later." He then promptly walked off to talk to the woman he had mentioned.

Walking out of the city with Alice, the two set out on the road, heading toward where the bandits were rumored to live. Seeing as there were two high level monster girls in the area, Shirou had decided that he should head here first, seeing as it presented the greatest danger to the people in the area. "Hey Shirou, you seem, to me at least, that you're normally holding back because you don't want to kill your enemies, right?" Alice asked.

"Yeah, why do bring that up?" Shirou responded, not sure where she was going with this.

"I have a solution for that, I'll lend you this sword, it's name is Angel Halo, and it has magic in it that causes wounds caused with it to seal one's opponents, instead of killing them," Alice said, holding out a grey abomination of a sword.

However, Unlimited Blade Works told him more about the blade than Alice. It was a sword made out of melted angels, however that worked, 666 of them to be exact. The sword seals its enemies by eroding the innate magic that is used to keep its form. In fact, it classified as a Noble Phantasm, and it was used by the Hero Heinrich in the past. There were a few elemental skills that he used stored in the blade, however due to not having the prerequisites he could not utilize them at the moment. The blade felt like pure evil to him, however, the fact that it did not kill was something that Shirou Emiya could not overlook, no matter how evil the blade felt.

"Thank you very much for the gift, Alice, I appreciate it quite a very much. You can have it back now," Shirou said, leaving Alice quite perplexed. He then promptly traced two of them and Altered them to look more like swords and less like unholy abominations.

"That ability of yours never ceases to amaze me," Alice said, shaking her head in amazement at his use of tracing.

After walking for a couple hours, Shirou and Alice reached the base of the mountains that the bandits were hiding in. Lancer had given him the general location of where they were hiding, but now he had to find it. As the two of them were walking around, Alice suddenly disappeared, and a small goblin carrying a comically large hammer appeared in front of Shirou. Shirou approached the Goblin girl, and said, "Don't you know it's dangerous around here? There are a band of bandits around here, and they have a Dragon and a Vampire among them, You should probably get out of here," warning the girl of the danger in the area.

"What do you mean, foolish human! I am the Goblin Bandit of Earth of the Four Bandits! Prepare yourself to pay for your insult! Eat this! Sand hurricane!" The Goblin Bandit(?) says as she attempts to throw sand in Shirou's face. Due to the height difference, it doesn't work very well. Shirou then easily disarms the Goblin girl.

"Now run along, and don't play with dangerous things like that hammer, you might hurt yourself," Shirou said, scolding the little girl.

"I'll remember this! My friends will get you!" the Goblin Girl said as she made a beeline for a nearby cave. Shirou then followed her to see if she was bluffing or actually telling the truth. When he reached the cave, Alice joined back up with him.

She then sniffed the air, "So thats how it is, try not to kill them," Alice said, knowing something he didn't. Reinforcing his eyes and looking into the cave, he figured out what she meant. Inside the cave was the Goblin girl and three other monster girls about her age, a tiny lamia, a dragonkin pup, and a young vampire girl. Being careful not to aim anywhere that would hit the girls, Shirou started launching high speed swords into the cave to flush them out and teach them a lesson.

After about a minute of firing he stopped, and the four bandits came fleeing out, terrified out of their minds. Grabbing them by the scruffs of their necks as they ran by him, he picked them all up and looked them in the eyes.

"Are you girls really the four bandits who have been 'terrorizing' the countryside?" Shirou asked skeptically. They nodded their heads.

"Did what just happened teach you to be good girls and never do what you did again?" Shirou asked, looking them in the eyes. The girls nodded their heads frantically.

"Now then, we're going to go to Iliasburg and you're going to apologize to the good people you bothered. Any objections?" The girls furiously shake their heads.

"So you're going to pull them around town? What if people lynch them?" Alice said, doubting Shirou's plan of action.

"The people of town are good people, they would never do that. However on the off chance I'm wrong, you've seen what I can do. I would never let these girls come to harm due to prejudice," Shirou said, responding to Alice's question seriously, "Now then, lets go, I hope I can trust you to follow if I put you down, right?" He asked the girls. They all nodded in affirmation. Putting them down, the six of them headed off to Iliasburg.

"I'm very sorry!" All four girls exclaimed after Shirou had gathered the villagers so that they could apologize. Shirou was very relieved when the villagers accepted the girls apologies, and even offered them work in town after they apologized. It showed that even here on the Ilias continent, there was hope for coexistence.

"That was unexpected, So these humans were able to accept monsters?" Alice said, surprised by the situation.

"I was expecting them to accept the girls' apology, but this is beyond what I thought. I'm glad that even here coexistence seems possible," Shirou said, happy with the result. As the two of them were talking, the dragon pup came up and tugged on Shirou's pant leg.

"You helped me so much. Let me give you this," The dragon pup says as she gives Shirou a beautiful red gem.

"What is it?" Shirou asks, intrigued by the gem.

"Im not really sure, some rich people ran by the hideout and it dropped out of their luggage," The dragon pup replied.

"Thank you for the gift, I appreciate it," Shirou said to the pup as he patted her head. He made a mental note to look for the real owners of the gem if he had time.

It seemed that Alice was eyeing the gem carefully. "Do you happen to know what this is, Alice? You seem rather interested in it," Shirou said, calling her out on her odd behavior.

"Yes, I do happen to know what it is, however, it is in your best interest that you do not know what it is," Alice said.

"Well then, I'll take your word for it," Shirou said as he pocketed the gem. "Well then, I guess we should head out. Be good little girls now," Shirou said to the monster children.

"We will!" the girls responded enthusiastically.

Leaving the plaza, Alice and Shirou headed out of town and back on the road. "Where are we heading this time, Shirou?" Alice asked.

"This time we're going to go to Happiness village. The events there bother me. It seems to me that there has to be a reason for the harpies to be abducting the villagers," Shirou said, thinking about the situation.

"You're right, we should take a look. If the situation isn't resolved then Ama-Ama Dangos maybe be lost to the world forever," Alice said, her priorities obviously askew. Ignoring Alice's obviously selfish reason for going there, Shirou continued on to Happiness Village.

After a few hours of walking, they reached the forest surrounding Happiness village. As they were walking through the forest toward the village, Alice enlightened him as to why Happiness Village was named the way it was. It was apparently derived from the fact that Harpy Village was nearby. However, in the middle of their conversation, Alice suddenly disappeared.

"Great," Shirou thought to himself, "I wonder what kind of monster is going to try to rape me now," knowing that the only reason Alice ever disappeared like that was if a monster was about to jump him. Sure enough, a monster then appeared in front of him. It seemed to be some sort of bee monster, Shirou briefly wondered how he could use the honey in his cooking, but he quickly dismissed the thought. It was no time to be thinking about cooking. He had to protect himself from being raped by this monster girl, because he KNEW that if he didn't, Rin would somehow find him and it would NOT be pretty. The girl was giving him a very seductive look, the look that all monsters gave him.

Before she even had a chance to speak, "Leave now, and don't attack other travelers," Shirou said to the girl, hoping it would get her to back off.

"Oh, this one is feisty, I'm going to enjoy breaking you," the girl said unfazed by his threat as she began to close in on Shirou. She had been warned, and she had not listened. Shirou drew his twin angel halos, and quickly reinforced his legs, dashing at the monster girl. Caught completely unaware by his surprise attack, she failed to dodge the twin swords being swung at her as they raked across her chest. However, due to their nature as sealing weapons, instead of dying from a normally lethal attack, she instead lost her form in a cloud of particles, which dispersed into the air, leaving an ordinary bee where the girl had been moments before.

After the fight, Alice reappeared before Shirou. "You fight much differently now that you know your attacks cannot kill, Shirou," Alice commented, noticing the change in his attacks.

"I wish to solve things as quickly and peacefully as possible, and now that the quickest option does not permanently harm my opponent, I take it," Shirou said, shrugging. After that, they quickly made their way to Happiness village without incident.

"So this is Happiness Village huh?" Shirou said. As he looked around, and the village seemed on the surface to be fairly normal. Except that upon closer inspection, there were no men around. The only male in the village was a young boy, probably around 8 or 9 years of age. What Lancer had said was true, the harpies were kidnapping all the men in the village.

"Oh a traveler, and a strong looking one at that," A woman working nearby said to Shirou. "You came all this way, yet we don't really have anything to entertain a traveler with, and due to a lack of manpower, we're short on happiness honey too," the woman continued.

However, before Shirou could ask her any questions about what was happening, a scream came from the middle of the village, and it sounded like it came from the young boy who he had seen earlier. Shirou immediately ran to the source of the scream, and he saw a harpy trying to make off with the young boy. Not stopping for a second, Shirou drew his swords, reinforced his legs, and hurled himself at the harpy. However, she was faster than the bee girl, and barely avoided a sealing , Shirou had accomplished his objective, as she was forced to let go of the boy and driven back a few feet.

"Leave," Shirou said with steel in his voice, "or else I will be forced to seal you." The harpy, realizing that she had no chance, quickly made her escape, and Shirou reinforced his eyes so he could figure out where the harpy's village was based on her movements.

"Alice, do harpies have any sort of leader?" Shirou asked, "I want to figure out why this is going on, and the easiest way to do so would be probably to ask."

"Harpies do always have a leader, try not to be too violent, they more than likely have a good reason they are doing this," Alice said to Shirou, reminding him that there are always two sides to a story.

"Of course, I don't intend to fight unless they attack first," Shirou said to Alice. "Villagers, stay inside and take cover in case a harpy attacks while I am not around, I will be back after figuring out what is happening, and I promise, I will find a way to bring your men back home," Shirou said to the villagers. With that, he charged off to where he had seen the harpy land, hoping all the while that he could end this peacefully, like he had done with the bandits.

After a few minutes of running, Shirou reached the harpies' village. He then set about trying to find the location of their leader, so that he could talk things over peacefully, and hopefully find a resolution to this situation that was good for both the humans and the harpies, one that led to coexistence. He had thought that it would take a while to find what he was looking for, however after a few minutes of his searching the village, a powerful looking harpy appeared from above.

"Hm, who might you be? Can I help you?" The powerful looking harpy asked.

"My name is Shirou, is it correct to assume you are the leader of the harpies?" Shirou asks, trying to confirm the situation.

"Yes you would be correct, I am the Queen of these harpies, what do you want of me?" The harpy queen asks, also trying to figure out the situation.

"Good, I was sent here from Happiness village to figure out what was happening, and if possible resolve this matter peacefully," Shirou said, stating his intentions.

"So you've come to take the men back, hmm?" The queen responded, narrowing her eyes.

"Not necessarily, it depends why you took them," Said Shirou, denying the fact that he had come here for the sole purpose of retrieving them.

"Well then, you seem to be a reasonable human, far more reasonable than the other people the villagers have sent, why don't we head up to my house so that we can talk, it seems we may have a long discussion ahead of us," the Queen said, agreeing to talk.

"It would be my pleasure," Shirou said, thinking to himself that he's glad that he finally found a reasonable monster who wasn't just out for his sperm.

As it turns out, the harpies had a very compelling reason to take the men, if they hadn't they would have gone extinct. This was the last place where harpies lived in the world, and due to the prohibitions, no men here would voluntarily mate with them. To top it all off, the men were not kept here against their will, they could leave at any time, and they chose to stay.

"Thank you for telling me about the situation, it has been a very enlightening experience, now let's talk about how we can make this work for everyone," Shirou said, getting to the meat of the discussion.

"What do you mean? The men are all happy here, and we are safe from extinction, what else could we possibly need to work out?" the Queen asked, unsure of why he had said that some things needed to be worked out.

"I understand that you need the men to reproduce, and I also understand that they don't want to leave, however they have responsibilities to the women they left behind. As it is now, they cannot make a living, and will probably die. I cannot abide by this, so I believe I have a solution that works for everyone," Shirou said, assessing the situation.

"And that would be?" The queen said, eyeing him suspiciously.

"I suggest that we move to merge both villages, that way, the men can attend to their responsibilities, produce offspring with you so that you don't die out, and they can continue to produce human offspring, of which the males can both work towards the livelihood of the village, and serve as mates for future harpies. I realize that this is a base offer, and it has to be discussed between you and the female elder of the village, however if you talk with her, I believe, with this as a starting point, the villages can come to an agreement that benefits both of you," Shirou said to the queen, giving her a brief outline of the plan, "Do you have any additions?"

"Not at this time, however, that depends on if the elder has any additions to this plan. Also, what makes you so sure that the elder will be willing to sit down and talk? I may be reasonable, but I'm not sure she will be, she has sent plenty of adventurers to take care of us, instead of talking," The queen harpy said.

"Honestly, they didn't seem like unreasonable people, however due to the prejudices caused by the religion around here, they probably thought you were eating them, killing them, and keeping them against their will. Once it's explained to them that it isn't the case, and they have proof that it isn't that way, they would probably be willing to sit down and talk," Shirou said, explaining the situation with the village to the queen.

"You seem confident in your predictions. Well then, let us be off, I'll bring along the former elder and a few other men to show that they are unharmed," the queen said as she walked toward the door.

"I'll meet you on the outskirts of the village then," Shirou said as he walked toward the door himself.

"Sounds good," the Queen responded, as she took off to get everything prepared.

After meeting on the outskirts of the village, Shirou, the queen, and the men she had picked to show that the men were alive headed toward Happiness village. Shirou had them wait back a bit, and he headed into the village to get the elder so that he could explain a bit beforehand. After explaining the situation to her, he led her back to where the queen harpy and the men were waiting. She was quite surprised to hear the truth of the situation, and she smacked her husband around a bit for not only making her worry about him, but for cheating on her.

After talking over the situation for a few hours, it seemed that the two sides had come to a conclusion. They were going to follow Shirou's plan however, the harpies would also help out with the farm work. It appeared that there was a bit of tension with the new family structures in the village, but it seemed to be working out fine. The people even started preparing a festival to celebrate the event. After the celebration had gone on for a while, and the villagers appeased Alice with a large helping of happiness honey, the Harpy queen landed next to Shirou.

"You did a lot to help everyone today," the Queen told Shirou.

"It was nothing really, all I did was suggest a plan and bring you together. You and the villagers worked it out yourselves," Shirou said, shrugging off the praise.

"You're quite strong too, the strongest human I've ever seen, yet you didn't immediately use that strength, instead, you negotiated with us," The queen said, eyeing Shirou.

"How could you tell?" Shirou asked, curious as how she could tell that he was strong by just looking at him.

"I can tell quite easily. From how you look, to how you hold yourself, it's obvious that you are no average human," The queen replied, showing how perceptive she really was, "The harpy who you drove off also attested that your speed and skill were beyond anything she had seen."

"I do apologize for having to attack her, however I could not avoid it, she was about to abduct a child," Shirou said, defending his actions.

"Don't worry about it, she wasn't hurt. But anyway, when you're done here, why don't you come up to my treehouse so I can properly reward you for everything you have done?" The Harpy Queen asked Shirou, her eyes bearing sincerity.

"Alright, If you put it that way, I guess I can come up and spend some time with you later, when do you want me to come up?" Shirou asked, completely oblivious to the Queens true intentions.

"Why not in about an hour, that'll give me plenty of time to get your reward ready," the Queen Harpy replied, as she went through things she had to do to be ready for him.

"Sure, sounds good to me," Shirou said, still completely oblivious to the situation.

"Well then, I'll be off, see you in an hour, Shirou," the queen said, as she flew off to her house to prepare.

"I wonder what kind of reward she has planned for me, maybe its a sword. That would be awesome," Shirou mused out loud.

Alice heard him, and she muttered, "Idiot," under her breath.

_"Emiya-kun, its quite obvious the reward she wants to give you is not a sword. She wants to give you her body to you as a reward, in other words, she wants to fuck you! How dense can you be! And I swear if you take her up on her proposition I will find you and when I do, you will NOT like what happens!" Rin yelled at the mystic code that Zelretch had given her. Which, naturally, since she was in his office at the very moment, caused Zelretch to burst out in laughter.__"I swear, if you couldn't just teleport away, I would have beaten you to a pulp already, you perverted vampire," Rin hissed at Zelretch. Which just amused him further._

_ "This was definitely one of the best pranks I have ever pulled, just seeing Rin like this is worth it," Zelretch thought to himself as he split his attention between the screen and his infuriated apprentice, "Totally worth it."_

As it turned out, much to Shirou's disappointment, it was NOT a sword that she offered him. Instead, she offered him a "sheath" for his "sword" that he could do as he pleased with for the night. He had attempted to say no, but she kept pressing him to take her up on her offer. He gave in after a while, he was a man after all, and he had gotten used to having sex almost every night with two beautiful women, and he had not had any real sex since he landed here. He just prayed that Tohsaka never, ever found out about this. He then proceeded to have a night of passion so intense with the harpy queen that stories would be passed down the Harpy royal line about it for decades to come.

_Meanwhile, in another dimension, Rin wreaked much havoc as she tried to beat down Zelretch for his part in this, and much destruction ensued. She too, created a story that would be passed down for many generations, a story of a tiny, oriental, witch chasing around Zelretch with what could only be described as the fastest rate of fire of Finn shots seen to date._

**Author's Note: Before I get any whining about why I removed Amira, here's the reason, she does not belong in a serious setting. Too much fourth wall breaking and general tomfoolery. And if you don't know why Alice's tail curled up around him in his sleep, neither do the two of them. Its a bit of a joke on my part, try to figure it out.**

**Once again, Im happy to have your comments and I read all of them and I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I hope you enjoy all the chapters to come.**


	5. Chapter 5

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the anything from the Fate/Stay Night Universe, owned by Type-Moon, or Monster Girl Quest, owned by Torotoro Resistance. All credit is given to the owners of their works. The only thing I will claim to own is the changes I have made to any character or the storyline that are not canon.**

**I do apologize for the delay, I had some personal issues come up, that and my beta, who is awesome at his job, kept distracting me. **

**Also, I had been not putting it in until now, but Shirou can get a general idea of a monster's strength through his magical senses since they are magical creatures. So if he runs into a creature he knows nothing about and can't pin, thats a resource for him. **

**And now to the aftermath of both incidents.**

_After a few hours of chasing the perverted old vampire throughout the halls of the Magus Association, and turning the walls of the magus association into swiss cheese while doing so, Rin finally cornered him in a dead end hallway. "You're quite the persistent one, Rin, although I had come to know as much with having you as a student for almost a decade now," Zelretch said to Rin as she cornered him, "I assume you want me to send you to Shirou as soon as possible?" Rin responded with a nod and her patented "Rin Tohsaka Scary Smile #1" "Well then, I have a few errands for you take take care of for me before I do so, contact me on the terminal you've been using to watch Shirou when you complete one, and I'll send you to the next," Zelretch said materializing the list in her hands._

_"Oh you better-" Rin began to say, as she was cut off by being teleported. _

_"Don't worry, I sent Saber with you too, so there shouldn't be anything you can't handle," Zelretch said smiling as he watched Rin fall into the portal, with her cursing him all the way through._

Shirou awoke to the feeling of warm flesh on his chest and feathers enveloping him. Over the years of living with Rin and Saber, the sensation of warm, feminine flesh being pressed against him as he awoke was something he was used to. However, he was a bit confused at the new sensation of being enveloped in feathers. "Good morning, Shirou, you look much different while asleep," the Harpy Queen said, greeting Shirou as he woke up. As he heard her voice, he instantly remembered the crazy situation that old man Zelretch had put him into, and what he had done last night. Shirou was so glad that Rin and Saber were in a completely different dimension and there was no way for them to know what happened, or else he would be completely dead meat.

Leaving the Queen's tree house in the morning, he was greeted by Alice and the villagers. The villagers thanked Shirou for bringing the men home safely, and offered to host him if he were ever to come by again. The queen, after having gotten dressed, joined in the farewell, "Even though we had our reasons, we were still wrong, and because of you we were able to correct our mistake," the queen said seriously. "I wish you a safe journey, and I hope you don't forget about me while you're out there. Alice I knows I won't after what you did last night," She added, winking at Shirou.

"Yeah, thank you everyone, I hope you do well as well," Shirou responded, wisely deciding not to try to flirt back to a monster.

"You got laid. You so got laid," Alice said, bringing up Shirou's escapades last night.

"I can't confirm or deny that, I'm not one to kiss and tell," Shirou responded to Alice, noting that ten years ago, his face would have gone bright pink at the mention of something like this.

"Is something wrong, you two seem to be whispering a lot," the village elder said, obviously worried about them.

"Ah, it's nothing. However, we should better get going. Take care of yourselves!" Shirou said, turning to leave. He was answered with replies of "take care" and "do well on your journey" from both the humans and the harpies. Shirou knew that the hardest part of coexistence for that village was yet to come, but he was hopeful for them, as the leaders of both parties seemed to be very reasonable people. With that in mind, the two of them left the harpy village, and started to make their way to Iliasport.

_The Queen and her subordinates watched as Shirou and his companion left the village. "Why is he leaving, I thought you were going to sleep with him to ensnare him and force him to stay and help re-establish the harpy race," one of the harpies said to the Queen._

_ "I tried, young one, but that man is like no other man I have ever encountered. Not only did he have enough endurance to bring me to my peak before he did, but he seemed to be immune to critical ecstasy as he kept going even after he came," The queen replied, blushing as she remembered how ferociously Shirou had taken her last night. _

_"Wow, to make even the Queen blush," Another harpy said, "He must be skilled indeed."_

_ "That he was youngling, that he was," was the Queen's only response as she indulged in the memories of last nights steamy liaison._

"I'm excited to be heading to Iliasport," Alice states as they make their way to the port town.

"Why's that? Is it because we will finally get off this wretched continent full of the name of a goddess who wants to wipe out your species?" Shirou asked, making conversation.

"That is one reason, but the biggest reason is that since it's a port town, it should have all kinds of foreign delicacies!" Alice said with a big grin on her face, her gluttony coming forth in all its glory. They chatted more about the state of the world as they headed north. Apparently, as one got further from Ilias Temple, the stronger monsters one would encounter, and the less faithful tended to be, which, to Shirou, meant that the further north one went, the more likely it was for monsters and humans to coexist, since, to him, Ilias was the reason why humans and monsters couldn't coexist. The fact that his battles would get harder as he went north didn't even occur to Shirou, since, as always, he was more concerned about the well-being of others rather than himself.

After talking for a while, Alice suddenly disappeared, which signalled that an encounter with a monster was imminent. He was curious as to why she kept disappearing when a monster would appear, but she seemed reticent to answer him, so he decided it must be something he didn't need to know, so he kept quiet about it. Sure enough, after walking a few more steps, a strange looking monster girl appeared. It had the upper body of a woman, and the lower body looked sort of like a leech, but he couldn't be quite sure.

"A traveler, and an unbaptized one at that. You look delicious, I'll suck everything out of you," the leech girl said, licking her lips, and giving Shirou the lustful look that Shirou had labeled "Monster Girl Lustful Stare #1". Knowing from experience that it was useless to try to talk it out with a monster girl once they gave him that look, Shirou prepared for a fight, and waited for the monster girl to charge him.

"That was fast as always," Alice said, noting how Shirou had made quick work of the leech girl who attacked him, who was now an ordinary leech.

"I have a question, Alice," Shirou stated.

"What's your question?" Alice responded, curious as to what he wanted to know.

"Why does me not being baptized make me delicious? I really don't get it," Shirou asked, genuinely confused about the subject.

"It's not so much about unbaptized people being delicious as people who are baptized are disgusting tasting," Alice said, with a look on her face like she just ate something disgusting.

"What do you mean they taste bad? What do they taste like?" Shirou asked, intrigued by her response.

"Angel Liver. They taste like angel liver," Alice stated without hesitation.

"And how do you know how that tastes?" Shirou asked.

"If you're implying I've eaten an angel, I haven't. It's just the first thing that came to mind when I accidentally fed on a hero, I regret doing it ever since," Alice said, looking like she was about to vomit from remembering the experience.

After a few more hours of uneventful traveling, the two of them set up camp for the night. They set up camp, Shirou cooked dinner, Alice ate it all, all the same as usual. However, the routine was broken when Alice happened to see Shirou changing his shirt, and coincidentally, his battle scarred body with perfect musculature. She was standing behind him, and her eyes were fixed on the largest, ugliest scar there was, which was located right where his heart was. "Shirou, what the hell is with all the scars!?" Alice exclaimed. Turning around without thinking, Alice got to see the matching scar on his front."In fact, How are you even still ALIVE!?" she exclaims as she realizes that they were a single scar.

"That," Shirou began to explain, "Is a very, very long story, and this particular scar is what started it all, and you met the person who did it," Shirou said as he began to explain the life he lived which pretty much started with the 5th Holy Grail war.

_Alice had known that her companion had gone through a lot, and that he had trained, if not taught, by geniuses in swordcraft and his "magecraft" that helped him develop his own unique style in both. She didn't realize that much of his ability comes not from his training, but from actual life or death experience, and he had also failed to mention that he had met his teachers DURING his first life or death experience._

_He had also mentioned the fire which took his family, and caused him to be adopted, however he didn't say much else before besides it had happened. He now described how absolutely horrifying it was, how people were dragging in others to die with them so they wouldn't die alone, how people called out for help and never were answered, slowly burning to death, trapped in their own homes. He had also failed to explain how close to death he was when his adoptive father had found him, or the fact that his father was partially responsible for it all. _

_The thing that most caught her attention, however, was the story of his scar that ran through his heart, and how he had survived it. The man named Lancer that they had met earlier in Iliasburg, whose real name she learned was Cú Chulainn, a famous ancient hero in his world, who was summoned to participate in a clandestine death match, along with other heroes of his world, including his sword teacher Saber, and a future version of himself who identified himself as Archer, had put his cursed lance through his heart. This would have been enough to kill most any normal human, but as it turned out, Shirou had a powerful artifact within him, which had saved his life. _

_She also learned that, crazy as it sounds, Shirou holds no grudge against Lancer for trying to kill him. In fact, he sort of likes the guy, and they had worked together later on to save his other lover, Rin, from being killed. Alice was baffled about how someone as young looking as him could have gone through so much. He then told her that this was just the first incident, and in the years after, he had been through many other life or death incidents, such as Vampire hunts, and from what he described, the vampire of his world were far more despicable than the vampires here._

_If it weren't for her prior knowledge that he was definitely not of this plane, and the sincere look in his eyes as he told her all this, she would have called him a liar, and left him. However, without a doubt, this man was telling her the truth_.

Shirou, having finished telling his life story to Alice, took a moment to pause and see if she had any questions. "Just how old are you, Shirou?" Alice asked, perplexed at how someone so young looking had gone through everything he had.

"I am twenty-eight years old, and to give you a reference as to when my life became what it was, It all started when I was seventeen," Shirou responded. Alice looked dumbstruck.

"You're only six years older than me, and you've been through that much?"

"It's nothing really special for a magus, and what do you mean you're younger than me? You seemed so powerful that I figured you were at least a couple hundred years old," Shirou said, surprised at the revelation that Alice was younger than him.

"Oh, So you really thought I was that old, Shirou Emiya?" Alice said, obviously infuriated by what he had said, with what appeared to be a close approximation to the face that Tohsaka made when she was unfathomably pissed off.

Shirou just gulped and nodded his head in response.

"Well then, I guess I will just have to show you how YOUNG and ENERGETIC I can be," Alice said as she advanced on Shirou. Shirou barely had time to curse the root that he always was associated with angry women no matter where he went before Alice was on top of him. Alice then kept Shirou up for a few hours showing him her "youth" before he finally passed out from sheer exhaustion.

Unfortunately for Shirou, even when he did finally get to sleep, he did not get to enjoy it. As soon as he fell asleep, he found himself in the mysterious cloud space where the Goddess Ilias had first come into contact with him. However, the person who appeared was not the blonde, conceited goddess that he had seen before. Instead, it was a strange woman with maroon hair and a labcoat. When she noticed that he was awake, she said, "It seems that I'm out of time," and he found himself drifting out of the space before he had a chance to ask who she was or what was going on.

_The man was more resistant to mental tampering than she had anticipated. She had expected some resistance, as she was dealing with an unknown being, however similar he was to the humans of this world he was. However she had not expected him to repel every attempt she had made into his mind. This was a feat that no human, no matter how well trained, should be able to pull off. This just caused her to be intrigued even more about the man she was experimenting on. "Just waht are you, Shirou Emiya," She thought to herself as she reviewed what meager data she did get from the experience._

Waking up in the morning, Shirou regarded it as a very strange experience that he would remember in case something like that happened again, since there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He and Alice then followed their normal morning routine of waking up, making breakfast, Alice eating most of it, and then the two of them heading off to their next destination, which was Iliasport as of now.

As they travelled they had their usual small talk about various things, and he had even fought a strange plant monster which appeared to be some sort of rafflesia, which Shirou then had to protect from Alice because she wanted to see how one of it's petals tasted. However, nothing he had seen in this realm could have prepared him for the other monster he faced on his way to Iliasport.

Shirou knew something was different about this monster. This one smelled far different than the other monsters, it smelled of blood, and his structural analysis told him that the stuff dripping off it's tentacles was an acid that was capable of eating away at human flesh. This thing was a man-eater, and a highly evolved one at that. Everything about this monster screamed that it had evolved to eat sentient beings to Shirou.

It was a threat to coexistence, as it could not feed on anything else. It was time to step back on the path of Shura, he knew that it had been too easy up until now, as nothing he had encountered couldn't be rehabilitated with time. This thing was different, it needed to die so others could live, and Shirou was the one who would do it. Shirou fired his circuits, reinforced his body, and traced a set of Kanshou and Bakuya. He was ready now, he would end this threat so that others may live. It was an act he had done many times before in his world. The monster moved towards him, and that was what signalled the beginning for the end for this monster.

_Alice was watching from nearby as always. She always hid herself as it would not be proper for a monster of her standing to be seen with a person defeating other monsters, but she was still interested in seeing her partner fight, so she always managed to hide herself somewhere where she could see the fight. She had wished that, just this once, she didn't stay and watch. _

_She knew that something was off when Shirou didn't pull his Angel Halos, instead pulling his black and white swords out of thin air. She didn't know why Shirou would decide to switch to a lethal weapon all of the sudden, he had said that he wanted peaceful coexistence, and he had thanked her for the blade that she had given him. She then remembered what he had told her yesterday. _

_He had participated in hunts for man eaters in his world, he had been scarred and nearly killed by them. She realized that the monster he was fighting ate people. But by the time she put two and two together, it was too late to do anything. The swords were covered in blood and the monster was slain, it was dead on the ground. The only consolation Alice had was that it didn't suffer. She had just witnessed a monster die for the second time in her life, and she was as powerless to stop it as the first time._

As usual, when Shirou finished off the monster, Alice reappeared. However, instead of her normal reaction of making a comment about his speed and moving on, Alice slithered up to him and asked quietly, "What the hell was that?"

"I eliminated an obstacle to coexistence," Shirou responded bluntly, dismissing his blades.

"How can you kill something so easily?! Does it not weigh on you that you ended a life?!" Alice yelled.

"Alice, that was a man-eating monster that could never have co-existed. If I had left it alive, it would have killed again as soon as it could," Shirou responded coldly, "Are you telling me I should have let this one being live so that even more people would die?"

"No! But I don't understand how you could do so without any hesitation at all! Even the heroes that had killed my mother had hesitated more than you!" Alice screamed at him. Shirou didn't know how to respond. It was the first time Alice had ever talked about her past, or herself really. He knew very little about the lamia's history before he met her, in fact, the only things he knew about her were what she had told him, and that she was very powerful.

"I'm sorry. It must be painful to remember an experience like that, Alice. However I will not apologize for my actions, to do so would be to deny who I am," Shirou responded.

"What do you mean by that, Shirou?" Alice hissed, obviously unhappy at the response.

"My goal in life is to be a superhero. I want to save everyone, however at the same time I realize that it is not possible to save every single person. The roper girl is a perfect example of this," Shirou responded calmly.

"What do you mean by that?" Alice asked, trying to figure out where he was going with this.

"The roper girl fed on human lives, Alice. If I had merely sealed it, how many more people would it feed upon if I left it alive? Not only the people it eats would be killed because of it either, monsters like this give more peaceful monsters a bad name, causing heroes to fight and kill the monsters that have a chance at coexistence. My solution to my flawed ideal is simple, when I cannot save everyone, save as many as I can, no matter what, even if I have to end one life by my own hands, if it even saves ten others, then I will do it. This is the only path for me, the path of the Asura," Shirou said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world to him.

"The path of the Asura, huh," Alice said, contemplating what Shirou had just told her. "Alice, lets go. If we dont hurry we won't reach Iliasport by nightfall," Shirou said, walking away.

_Alice was extremely confused. She could not reconcile the image of her camp mate who wanted to bring about coexistence between monsters, and the cold blooded killer that was willing to dirty his hands with the blood of others as long as it saved more than he killed. However, one thing was certain in her mind, that the man in front of her was fundamentally broken as a sentient being. She had initially pegged him as a hero swordsman, which explained his lack of hesitation in battle, and why he, like Granberia, did not normally use lethal force on his enemy unless necessary. However, with this, she realized that he was more of a sword than a swordsman. He viewed himself as a tool to complete his objectives, no matter how bloody he becomes._

_She was about to leave him for good, as it would more than likely lead to trouble for her to travel with such a dangerously broken person, however before she turned to walk away, an idea appeared in her head out of nowhere that she had not thought of before. "That which is broken can be mended," the idea whispered to her. That's right, if he's broken, then her leaving him would very well end in him not changing his ways, and more deaths. She realized that the only way for her to stop it was to mend his broken soul. With that, she ran and caught up to Shirou and the two of them silently continued their journey to Iliasport._

_"That was a nice play you made there, old hag," Zelretch said as a strange portal opened and a mysterious feminine figure stepped through. _

_"Nah, it was nothing really, youngster. Just a little bit of power to nudge things in the right direction," the mysterious woman responded._

_ "I see. I guess you're going to get in on this little game as well?" Zelretch replied._

_ "Of course, how could I have turned down that invitation that your apprentice and her rather unique familiar delivered to me?" The mysterious woman responded cheerfully._

_ "Well then, before we end up on opposite sides of the board, let us have a drink to celebrate our 50th game," Zelretch said as he opened a nice bottle of wine that he pulled out of his desk. _

_"Sounds good to me," the woman said, having a seat. _

_"To boredom and reality warping powers," Zelretch said, offering a toast._

_ "To boredom and reality warping powers," the woman responded, clinking their glasses together._

As they walked into Iliasport, Shirou noticed that it was getting quite late. Deciding to find an inn to stay the night in before trying to get any sources of information, he looked around for an inn for the two of them to stay in.

Arriving at the inn, Shirou went to get the two of them a room, when Alice, interrupted him, "Could we get a room with two beds if possible?" Alice requested.

"Sure it will cost a little extra though," the innkeeper responded.

"Thats fine," Alice responded curtly, not giving Shirou any time to interrupt. Realizing that he wasn't going to win this if he argued, he quietly paid the man, and he showed the two of them to their room. Which he was promptly kicked out of by Alice, citing that she wanted some time alone to think.

Shirou, now unable to go to bed for the time being, decided to spend his time in a productive manner, which was gathering information about the town and when he could take a boat from here to Sentora. Considering how late it was, he decided that the best place for him to get the most information would be the local bar. So, with that in mind, he headed into the town's most prominent bar.

As he entered the bar, he spotted a familiar figure. He was leaning over the bar, and holding his head like he had a massive headache. Shirou walked up to the bar, and sat down next to Lancer, and turned to look at him. "Got a problem, Lancer?" Shirou asked, noting Lancer's condiition.

"Yes, ten of them and they all want to drag me to their nest and never let me leave," Lancer said, groaning.

"Ah, I see. You decided to enjoy the benefits of being in a world filled with horny monster girls and it came to bite you in the ass," Shirou said, hitting the nail right on the head.

"What are you doing here? You don't seem the type to come to a bar," Lancer commented, trying to change the situation.

"Well, my traveling companion kicked me out of the room, and I really had nowhere else to go at the moment, and I thought I could find out some information while I was here" Shirou said, answering Lancer's question.

"Heh, so we both got woman problems. What you do? Sleep with another woman?" Lancer asked.

"No, well yes, but she wasn't upset at all about it. The only thing I can think of that would remotely explain why she's angry was that I killed a Roper girl, which she yelled at me about, although I don't understand why as it was a killer, and I'm pretty sure I resolved it by explaining to her about my reasons. I mean, she didn't even bring it up again after, so theres no way that it could be that," Shirou said, oblivious as always.

"Dumbass," Lancer said, smacking Shirou upside the head.

"What was that for?" Shirou said, not understanding why Lancer had hit him.

"Look kid, women are mysterious creatures. Unlike us, they live based on what their emotions, rather than their thoughts. So even though she KNOWS why you did what you did, she probably is still angry at you for doing it. And knowing you, she's probably more angry about how you were able to do it without showing any emotion, rather than the act itself," Lancer said, imparting wisdom onto Shirou based on his many years of experience with women.

"She did mention something about me not hesitating at all when she was yelling at me. So what am I supposed to do about it? It's not like I can apologize, nothing's going to change about what I did or how I think," Shirou said, not knowing what to do about his situation.

"I don't really have an answer for you on that, it's different in every situation. However, now that you know the problem, you can talk to your girl and see what the two of you can do to remedy it," Lancer said shrugging, "If I had an answer for you kid, I'd tell you."

"Thanks anyway Lancer, you were a big help," Shirou said, getting up from the bar.

"I wish you luck kid," Lancer said as Shirou walked toward the door, "God knows you need it."

Shirou headed back to the inn to have a long talk with Alice to hopefully clear up any misunderstandings she may have, and hopefully restore, at least partially, the friendship that the two of them had. It would be a very long night for Shirou, for more reasons than one.

_After Zelretch and the old hag had finished their little drinking party, Zelretch had said his farewells and she had left. "This just got a whole lot more interesting," Zelretch thought to himself, "She is definitely more fun as an opponent than Ilias could ever be." With that, Zelretch began to think about how he would be able to outmaneuver her in the game to come, and for the first time since their last game, he was genuinely excited to be doing something._

**Authors Note: Hey there faithful readers, once again I apologize for the lateness of the chapter. As for the identity of the mystery woman? Thats up to you guys to guess, and for you to find out at a later date. I would welcome you guys to also theorize about what twisted things Zelretch has Rin do, and what dimensions he sends her to to do them. **

**Once again, if you guys have any questions, just send me a PM or put it on the reviews. Im happy to have your feedback. Again, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and I hope that you will enjoy all the chapters to come.**


	6. Chapter 6

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the anything from the Fate/Stay Night Universe, owned by Type-Moon, or Monster Girl Quest, owned by Torotoro Resistance. All credit is given to the owners of their works. The only thing I will claim to own is the changes I have made to any character or the storyline that are not canon.**

_It was a fairly average day in heaven for Ilias, and she was doing the usual things a goddess does. Namely, observing her champion's struggles and doing general administrative duty. However, today, while Eden was reporting to her about the preparations for the contingency plan, a strange woman appeared in heaven. Which was odd, since nobody could enter heaven without being brought there by herself or Eden. However, the woman was standing there as if she had not a care in the world._

_ "You have ten seconds before you explain who you are, how you got in here, and why you are here," Ilias said, a bit out of shape from having her personal sanctuary violated. _

_"My, My, what a greeting," the woman said, fanning herself with her hand, "To answer your questions, I'm a friend of Zelretch, which explains how I got here, and you may call me, let's see, I guess Violet will do for now," the woman, who apparently was named Violet, said._

_ "I assume you are here about what I contacted Zelretch about earlier?" Ilias asked, trying to confirm if she was on her side or not._

_ "Why yes, of course. The youngster was a bit busy with other matters, so he sent me to help instead. I assume this is acceptable?" Violet inquired._

_ "Yes, I guess you will do, here's a document detailing what I need you to do," Ilias said, holding out a folder to Violet and walking away._

_"Hm, a tad boring for my taste," Violet said to herself, "I guess that just means its up to me to spice things up." She then promptly went to work on her own revised version of the plan, which was to be far different than the goddess's._

_Alice was distraught over the day's events and needed time to think things out on her own, so after they had rented the room, she kicked Shirou out so that she could have some time to herself to assort her thoughts and figure out at least a basic strategy for her to fix Shirou's broken soul. She knew he could be fixed, but she had no idea what she could do about it, in fact, she did not even know where to start. __He was just utterly incomprehensible to her. What confused her most, was how there seemed to be two Shirous. _

_On one hand, there was the relatively peaceful Shirou, who tried his best to hold back and not kill his opponents, and was a kind hearted and caring individual. However, within her traveling partner she knew another persona lurked below the surface. She had seen it when he had ruthlessly slaughtered the roper girl, and showed no remorse for it afterwards. Alice was not naive enough to think that peace could be achieved without sacrifices, and she knew that monsters like the roper girl would have to be dealt with._

_ However, what got to her most was how cold and ruthless Shirou was when he dealt with her. He was no longer the soft and caring person she knew, it was almost like he had a second personality in his mind. He had eliminated the creature as quickly and efficiently as possible, and he had no remorse for doing it. That was what got Alice, the fact that he could end a life so casually. She then realized what she had to try to teach him. She had to teach him that every life is valuable, no matter who or what they are. Alice then began planning what she would do, and was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she didn't even notice herself starting to drift off to sleep._

As Shirou made his way back to the inn, he tried to figure out how he would approach his conversation with Alice. He couldn't just apologize, because it would just make things worse if he had to kill something again, and he couldn't leave things as they are, as it would make traveling very uncomfortable. Shirou cursed the fact that, despite living with two of them for a decade, he had no idea how women in general thought. He could usually get along with and understand Saber and Rin, but they were exceptions to the rule. Shirou kept puzzling over this conundrum, and before he knew it he had arrived at the room, and he still didn't have a plan on how he was going to deal with it. "Oh well, I guess I have to wing it," Shirou thought to himself as he opened the door to the hotel room.

However, Shirou's thoughts were all for naught as he saw Alice sleeping peacefully slumped over the table in her human form. Smiling at how peaceful she looked, he grabbed a blanket and put it over her so she wouldn't wake up cold. When he was done doing that, he himself decided to go to bed, as it had been a long day not only for Alice, but for him as well, and he needed some sleep.

_Rin could not imagine how her day could get any worse. First, she had been tasked to steal what appears to be just an ordinary eight-sided chunk of carved wood, except for the fact that it radiates immense amounts of prana. Not only that, but on their way out, they got noticed by its owner, who had promptly chased them around shooting what appeared to be star-shaped blobs of pure magical energy. To top it all off, when Saber had run into a sunflower field to throw off the enemy, while carrying Rin princess style, they picked up another enemy, who could seemingly control the plants at her whim, and who could also shoot freaking laser beams from her umbrella. _

_"You perverted old vampire, you'd better get us out of here, now or else things could get pretty hairy!"_

_ "Did you obtain the item that I was looking for?" was his only response through the mystic code they were communicating through._

_ "Yeah, and that's what caused this entire mess. Now could you do your thing and get us the hell out of here and to our last objective?!" Rin yelled back through the code. Shortly after, with no warning as usual, a dimensional portal opened up in the ground, and they went hurdling into an unknown dimension._

Shirou woke up early, as always, the next morning, and as usual, Alice was still asleep, not having moved from the position he had left her in last night. He then got out of bed, and began his morning routine of changing out of his sleepwear and getting changed into his daily clothes. Alice who woke up a bit after, was slightly confused as to why she was slumped over a table with a blanket over her, but she soon got over it, and the two of them silently exited the room together to look for a ship to the Sentora continent.

Exiting the inn, the two of them knew that something was very wrong as soon as they left. Shirou had just attributed it to the time that they arrived last night, however, now that it was during the day, the fact that the harbor was nearly empty and there was hardly any commerce stuck out like a sore thumb. Deciding to get to the bottom of what was causing the problems with the city, the two of them set off to investigate.

Shirou decided that the best place to start would probably be Lancer, who he knew was in town because of the incident last night, because of the job that he was given by Zelretch.

After looking around for Lancer for about 15 minutes, the two of them found him at the docks, fishing. Shirou was a bit surprised by it, as from his experience with Lancer in the Holy Grail War, he didn't feel as if Lancer was a very patient person at all. Which made it seem strange to Shirou that Lancer would be fishing for fun. Noticing Shirou approaching, Lancer greets Shirou with a question, "By the look on your face, I assume you're wondering if I know anything about why the port is so empty, right?"

"Yeah, thats right," Shirou responded.

"Well kid, I guess you're in luck then. The old vampire contacted me and told me to figure out what's going on as soon as I got here," Lancer said, putting down the fishing rod.

"So what did you find out," Shirou inquired.

"Well, asking around town, I heard that whenever a ship tries to leave for the continent, a storm comes in and tries to wreck it. I also heard that some pirate named Selene had some sort of treasure trove around here, and there was a treasure in there by the name of Poseidon's bell, which apparently causes storms to disperse. Apparently nobody has tried to go get it because the cave is full of traps," Lancer responded.

"You know where the cave is?" Shirou asked.

"Yeah, its east of here, about 5-6 hours. Keep going and you can't miss it, it's in a big outcropping," Lancer answered.

"Thanks for the information. Good luck with your little harem," Shirou responded. To this, Lancer started massaging his temples and shooed the pair away.

Leaving town, the two of them headed towards their destination, the awkward air between them not lighting up a bit on the way. The trip which, in reality, took five hours, felt more like half a day due to the lack of conversation between the two of them

As they walked into the cave, Shirou noticed that there were a lot of sprung traps in the area, however there were no traces of blood. This suggested to Shirou that a highly skilled person had disarmed all the traps instead of avoiding them, for some reason.

As they progressed a bit deeper, the air seemed to get chillier all of a sudden, and it felt like there was a presence around them. "What was that!?" Alice exclaimed.

"Maybe it was a ghost?" Shirou responded.

Alice then started to get uncomfortably close to Shirou and said, "Hmph, Ghosts. How Unscientific."

"Actually Alice, ghosts are a real thing in the world I come from. There are apparitions, which are traces of feelings left behind by the deceased, there are wraiths, who are your traditional spirits who can't move on, then you have heroic spirits. Lancer, the guy we met before, is a heroic spirit," Shirou replied. Alice just went pale at that.

As they continued to press on through the cave, Alice had taken the lead by a bit. Shirou thought she was putting on a brave face so that Shirou wouldn't think she was afraid of ghosts, which was not working at all. He did admire her for facing up to her fears though. He was interested in seeing how their next interaction with Lancer would turn out though, seeing as she knew what he was now.

Click.

Snap.

"_**I am the bone of my sword**_."

There was no time to think. Shirou rushed to tackle Alice out of the way, hoping that he would make it in time to save her.

_With a crash, Alice landed on the ground. She immediately turned to look at what had knocked her down, and to her surprise she saw Shirou standing above her. And then, to her horror, she saw the spike trap bearing down on him. She realized in horror that in her distracted state, she had set off a trap without noticing, and Shirou had thrown himself in front of it to save her. She closed her eyes not wanting to see what was about to happen to the man who had just saved her life, she imagined a splat as the spikes penetrated his back, and then the image of the same spikes piercing through his chest, and his warm blood dripping down them onto her as his life faded before her eyes, with nothing she could do about it. _

_"No! Not again!" Alice thought to herself. She was about to watch another person die and not be able to do anything to stop it. First her mother, whose murder she had walked in on as the murderers stood over her still warm, lifeless body, their blades dripping in her vitae. Then she had witnessed Shirou ruthlessly dispatch the Roper girl, sinking his blades into her flesh and ending her life before she could stop him. And now, that very same man had thrown himself in front of a trap for her, a monster, who he had known for less than a week. Why would he throw away his life to save hers? Alice did not understand. Emotions she didn't recognize welled up in her chest and her eyes began to water behind their shut lids._

_CLANG. An unexpected noise was heard, and Alice's eyes snapped open and she stared in disbelief at the scene she saw. Instead of being run through by the trap, he had somehow managed to stop the trap with his body. Instead of being dead and run through, he miraculously appeared to be fine. Alice could only stare in disbelief as he threw the trap off his back, and wordlessly offered her a hand to help her to her feet._

_However, in doing so, he revealed that he had not escaped unscathed. Large amounts of skin had been taken of his arms, and Alice guessed the same was her back. Alice wondered how the trap had only managed to take the skin off of him. And then Alice noticed what had been laid bare by the removal of the skin._

_Swords._

_She could not believe her eyes. It looked as if he had swords where muscles should be. No, she thought to herself, its not as if he had swords where muscles should be, he does have swords where muscles should be. She imagined it was the same on his back, explaining how he had stopped the trap. She could not believe her eyes, she had thought of him as more of a sword than a swordsman, however she had never imagined that comparison would turn out to be true for not only the way he thinks, but for his body as well.__His body was quite literally made out of swords. _

_This brought a whole new level to the thought that she had when she had first met him and she stared into his eyes, at that moment she had thought that the man she stood in front of him had steel inside of him, however never in a million years would she have believed it to be as true as it really was. As these thoughts rolled about inside of her head, she stood up with Shirou's help and continued to stare in awe at the man who stood before her._

After saving Alice and getting the trap off of him, he helped Alice up. Promptly he was met with the question, "What the hell was that with the swords under your skin?!" asked by Alice.

"It's a bit of a long story, and quite complicated if I went into the technical details, but put simply, i'm projecting swords underneath my skin to prevent major injury," Shirou replied.

"But wouldn't that cause all kinds of other injuries?" Alice inquired.

"Yes, but they are all relatively minor, and my natural healing can fix them quite quickly. It's healed a lot worse, like having my side blown out by a giant axe-sword or being lancer through the heart," Shirou replied, "My skin is already regenerating quickly." He then showed Alice his wounds, which were considerably smaller than before.

Alice shook her head and said, "And you're sure you're human?"

Shirou just shrugged and said, "As far as I know." Alice just shook her head and the two of them continued on through the cave, without triggering another trap.

_Violet, who was the one who had reactivated that particular trap, was watching the events unfold as they were happening. And thanks to her unique powers, she had front row seats to Alice's thoughts as well. She was quite pleased with the way that turned out, and she was quite glad that she had taken the time to reactivate that one particular trap. It would result in some really interesting things to come, she just knew it._

As the pair advanced through the cave, Shirou noticed that, while not as friendly as they were before the Roper girl incident, the two of them had a lot less tension between them than before, which was good for him, since he hadn't the slightest idea of how to rectify the situation if he were to talk it out with Alice.

However, Alice suddenly disappeared, and at about the same time Shirou heard a voice from deeper in the cave cry "Help, this spider is going to eat me!" Shirou, being the hero that he is, rushed straight towards the call for help without a second thought.

Upon arriving, he saw a very strange situation unfolding. A spider girl had captured a small kitsune child, and it seemed as though she was going to eat her. This abhorred Shirou, as he had thought that monsters would not prey upon other monsters. His hands twitched, and he wanted to trace Kanshou and Bakuya, however after Alice's reaction to his last killing, and the fact that their friendship was still tenuous at best, he decided to draw his Angel Halos so that he could deal with it without upsetting Alice. He then charged in at the Spider girl, who was apparently trying to say something, however Shirou did not hear as he was too busy preparing to land a sealing blow.

After dealing with the spider girl in an appropriate manner, and releasing the kitsune, Alice reappeared. All Alice said was, "You should have left the little kitsune tied up. It would have been funny."

Shirou gave Alice a funny look and said, "You know, Kitsune need to coexist too."

Ignoring what he just said, Alice thought to herself out loud, "I wonder what kitsune tastes like."

"No eating other monsters, Alice," Shirou responded, scolding Alice. To this, Alice shrugged and the two of them moved on further into the cave.

As Shirou moved deeper into the cave, he began to detect a large magical presence. It was of the same quality as the little kitsune they had met earlier, but it was on a whole other level in power. Shirou began reinforcing himself as the two of them walked towards an ominous looking door, and before they entered, Alice pulled her usual disappearing act.

_As I walked into the medium sized room, I saw my opponent near the back of the room, guarding a door. She was different in body structure than the kitsune I saw earlier, she had a humanoid torso attached to the body of a fox where the head would be, with dirty yellow fur and seven long tails. From the number of the tails, I could tell she would be a dangerous opponent as a kitsune's power grows exponentially with the number of tails she has. _

_She too noticed me as I walked in the room. "I assume the reason why you are here, hero, is for the bell. Too bad for you that I will not let you pass. I shall have fun toying with you, as you smell delicious," the kitsune said, as she licked her lips and gave me a lustful stare. Knowing that a fight was inevitable, I drew my twin Angel Halos from their sheaths, and proceeded to charge the enemy to obtain the initiative._

_The kitsune seemed to think lightly of me at first, attempting to hit me with pleasure attacks, which I easily avoided due to their predictablility. The me from ten years ago would have been unable to dodge this, however I am no longer that child. After weaving in between her attacks for a half a minute, the kitsune seemed to decide to take me as a serious opponant and use more than just pleasure attacks. _

_Her eyes flashed, and I suddenly felt a bit sleepy. She must have mystic eyes that cause sleep, however they were not nearly as effective as she had expected due to the prana circulating in my circuits. _

_Out of nowhere, a tail impacted in my left side, and I went flying into the right wall of the room. Pain flared through my body, but I immediately realized that no major damage was done, a few bruises and maybe a laceration or two. _

_Knowing that she would attempt to finish the fight while I was down, I immediately dodged left as soon as I could, getting clipped on the right leg as I did, barely evading an attack that would have definitely broken more than a few bones. However, the strength of her attack would have left her off balance, so I took the opportunity to get a strike in. Charging as fast as I could at her, I struck deep into her right flank and immediately retreated to avoid a powerful counterattack._

_ The kitsune then changed her pattern of attack, seeming to be trying to stall me instead of going for fatal blows. I could also sense her concentrating her prana, as she prepared to end me in one strike. _

_The battle would end in the next ten seconds, my instincts told me._

_ I brought to mind the only technique that would end this fast enough. It was a technique learned from recording Heracles's weapon in the fifth war, the name of it was Nine Lives Blade Works. It would allow me to strike her nine times instantaneously, and end the battle, however it would require me to be in melee range. With seven seconds remaining, I discovered a path through her tails._

_ "__**Trigger off**__," I chanted with five seconds remaining. Dashing through the path through her tails, I reached her at three seconds until cast. _

_"__**Set, Nine Lives Blade Works**__," I incanted with 2 seconds remaining. The swords struck through her temple, neck, chest, abdomen, left and right femoral arteries, front left leg and front right leg, and a strike through her fox body._

_ With one second remaining, the kitsune was sealed, and she took the form of a harmless, yellow fox. However, the magical presence I detected had not completely dissipated, due to their close proximity and similar nature, I had failed to notice that there was a second fox, who seemed much stronger, waiting in the next room. Bracing myself for battle I waited as the scent drew closer._

Shirou eyed the door, ready to fight at a moments notice if the entity behind it was hostile. Shirou eyed the small bodied kitsune that walked through the door, never letting his guard down, especially since he made sure to count the tails as soon as he could see them. She was a nine-tailed kitsune, one of the monsters that Alice had told him about. She was Tamamo, the heavenly knight of earth, and probably the strongest spellcaster in the realm.

"That was some skill you showed there, you must be quite powerful if you sealed Nanabi so easily. May I inquire as to what your name is?" Tamamo asked.

"My name is Shirou Emiya, and you must be Tamamo of the four heavenly knights. I assume you were watching the fight?" Shirou responded.

"Why yes, and I have to say, I am very surprised that a human like you could perform magic," Tamamo responded, "I would be very intrigued on an explanation of how you did it."

"Maybe I will, after I decide whether you are a friend or a foe, as I don't know whether you intend on blocking me from obtaining what I am here to get," Shirou responded.

"What a clever man, not explaining how his magic works to a potential foe. You're a smart one," Tamamo responded.

"That doesn't answer my question, do you intend to block me from the bell or not?" Shirou inquired, knowing that depending on the answer, he might have to fight the being in front of him.

"Normally, I would block you, but I have two reasons not to at the moment," Tamamo replied.

"And those are?" Shirou responded, curious as to her reasons.

"For one, you saved my little companion from being eaten by a nasty spider, which I must repay you for," Tamamo replied.

"And the other?" Shirou asked.

"You're traveling with Alice, who is the sixteenth of her name, and the current Monster Lord," Tamamo said, trying to surprise Shirou.

It didn't really work. Alice, who had been laying in wait in the shadows, came out to where the two of them stood. "I'd imagine you would be more surprised Shirou, finding out you were traveling with the monster lord and all," Alice responded.

"Well, to be honest, its not that surprising. You disappear whenever a monster is around like it would be bad to be seen with me, and your magical aura is stronger than Granberia and Tamamo. Who else could you have been?" Shirou asked.

"Right, the whole smelling magic thing. That must really come in handy," Alice commented.

"Yeah, it really does. It's how I knew that Tamamo was behind that door and you were watching from somewhere in the room as well," Shirou responded.

"So you're not going to try to attack me now that you know for sure who I am, you want to be a hero after all," Alice commented.

"Why would I? You seem to be a good person, and who knows what kind of person would replace you if you died. Sure you may be a little cynical, but you have a good head on your shoulders, and you genuinely care for your people," Shirou honestly responded.

"And you don't care that you're traveling with the monster lord?" Tamamo asked.

"Not at all, it actually is a good thing. I'm trying to promote coexistence, what is a more powerful symbol of coexistence than a hero and a monster lord traveling together peacefully?" Shirou asked.

"You really are quite tolerant and reasonable for a human," Tamamo responded, "I like you."

"Thanks, it means a lot," Shirou honestly responded, "Do you happen to know where Poseidon's bell is around here?"

"Yeah, I have it. It's yours if you want it, as a reward for saving my companion from a horrible fate," She said, holding out the bell.

Grabbing the bell, Shirou responded, "Thanks again, and when I'm sure that I never have to fight you, I will be glad to explain how I can do magic," Shirou responded.

"I look forward to that day, good luck in your quest for coexistence, and make sure you take care of Alice," Tamamo responded.

"Don't worry, I will," was his response. Tamamo simply waved goodbye and teleported away.

The two of them, now that they had found what they were looking for, left the cave and started to head back towards Iliasport.

By the time they arrived back, it was dark out, and there was no way they would be able to charter a boat to Sentora today. They then went back to the Inn that they had stayed at the night prior, and rented a room.

This time however, instead of requesting a double bed, Alice was perfectly fine with sharing one. It seemed that his acceptance of her as the monster lord, and his continued willingness to travel with her despite that fact, had made it so that she had at least somewhat forgave him for what he had done before. Shirou hoped that they could always stay friends like this, and not have to fight, he wished for a world where he did not have to kill, and humans and monsters lived together in peace.

He knew that this was a foolish dream to have, however he still clung on to it, as pursuing an ideal and never turning his back on it was what made him Shirou Emiya. As the two of them drifted off to sleep, Shirou dreamt of swords, as he did every night.

However, Alice dreamt of something different than usual, instead of dreaming about food and having nightmares about her past, she had a dream for a future, one in which she could forgive humans for what they did to her mother, and one where humans and monsters lived together in peace, with their leader as a prime example of coexistence.

_In Port Natalia, a young girl was crying alone in the streets. Her day couldn't have gone more wrong. She had confessed to the man she loved, who had told her he didn't even notice her in that way, and he had tried to kill her as well. She would have died, if it weren't for a strange old man who gave her a strange medallion, which quenched her thirst, and had sent her here, to a strange town in a strange world she had no knowledge of. "Well, it beats being dead," the girl thought to herself, obviously trying to look on the bright side of what could have been called the worst day in her life._

**Authors Note: Hey guys, What did you think of the chapter, I tried a new writing style for the battle scene, if its good let me know, and if I get enough good reviews, I will go back and redo the Granberia scene in this way. Also, I hope you enjoyed the little teaser at the end, and I hope you guys keep trying to figure out the identity of the mysterious Violet. Remember, I love to hear your feedback, so feel free to shoot me a PM or leave me a review. I write this for you guys, my awesome return readers. I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it for you. I hope you guys share this with your friends so they can enjoy it too. I'll see you guys next week.**

**P.S. 11,583 views, 69 reviews, 137 favorites, and 175 followers as of the posting of this chapter. You are awesome. I did not expect to get so much attention for this, being my first fic and all.**


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